When your influence strategy stops working, should you retreat or reinvent?
What happens when feminist organizations face growing backlash, dwindling engagement, and unclear paths forward?
That was the question facing a group of grantees from the Ford Foundation’s Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Justice initiative, all working to advance feminist goals in the Global South. With shifting political winds and increasingly fragmented audiences, their communications strategies needed more than just a refresh—they needed a reset.
We partnered with them to design and deliver the Influence Reset Program, a tailored capacity-building experience to help each organization conduct a realistic assessment of their communications impact and chart a new strategic direction.
How to penetrate the TikTok brain—and engage your antagonist
The first stage of the program unfolded through a series of virtual sessions. Together, we explored multiple dimensions of influence strategy: the organizational life cycle, the neuroscience of messaging, how to expand reach on social media (or “how to penetrate the TikTok brain”), and how to communicate effectively in an era of backlash and polarization—including one session titled “Engaging your antagonist.”
Each session concluded with a self-assessment exercise, prompting participants to identify their own weak spots and opportunities for improvement.
Participating organizations included Me Too International, Fòs Feminista, Raising Voices, MenEngage, Prospera, Women’s Link Worldwide, CREA, Narrative Hive, GWL Voices, the Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative, and RESURJ.
From insight to action
At the end of the cycle, each organization received a personalized feedback document with concrete, actionable recommendations. Some were laser-focused—such as rewriting website content to eliminate jargon—while others suggested broader shifts in narrative positioning, branding, or alliance-building.
The results were immediate. Over 90% of participants said the process helped them clarify weaknesses and map out a path toward stronger, more focused communications.
What comes after the reset?
For three organizations, this reset became the starting point for a deeper transformation. Through the Impact Plus Program, a second phase of the project, we worked side-by-side over the course of three months to implement the most strategic recommendations.
At the heart of this second phase was a powerful provocation: paralysis or reinvention? In contexts of political upheaval and growing hostility to progressive agendas, what’s the smartest move? For these organizations, that question became a compass—and the foundation for bold new decisions about where, how, and why to speak.
