One of the three strategic goals that emanated from the Forum's 2014 strategic planning process was to "develop new tactics to ensure that our research is making a difference." Specifically, our new three-year strategic planning document specifies that:

 

The Forum needs to be more proficient and more direct in communicating the results of its research...we must improve our ability to get quality research and information into the hands of people who make decisions, and we must do so in a way that ensures they can easily digest and use it. We also must enhance our efforts to generally communicate our research findings to our members, the media, and the general public. To accomplish these goals, we will spend more time on the packaging and presentation of our research products.

 

Forum members and friends hopefully have noticed our efforts to implement this component of our strategic plan in recent weeks. We now accompany each major report with a short video that highlights key findings and recommendations. Most of our reports also will be complemented with stand-alone executive summaries; our communications to members announcing report releases will contain brief bullet-point summaries of the report's content; and we will use social media to highlight interesting report findings in the week following the release of each report.

 

I believe that in most cases, truly understanding and taking a position on a complicated policy issue does require reading a detailed report and considering differing viewpoints and distinct policy options. Yet, at the same time, it would be foolish to think that policymakers - as well as the thousands of Forum members and friends who follow our work - always have the time or interest to read our full reports. Giving our followers the opportunity to learn about key findings by watching a short video or reading a quick summary adds to the value of our research. By doing so, we may even pique their interest to read the full body of our work in ways we otherwise could not have.

 

We are interested in hearing what you think about our efforts to package our research to make it more accessible and dynamic. If you have viewed one of our new videos or noticed the new packaging efforts and have any thoughts on how we're doing, please feel free to send me an e-mail or give me a call.

 

Sincerely,

 

Rob