From Policy to Impact: Reframing Change in the South

I’ve worked in this policy space long enough to know that facts and data alone don’t move people. We do the hard parts well: the research, the drafting, the analysis. But we often skip the step that gives all that work its power—how we frame it.

And when we don’t frame it, someone else will.

Too often, people don’t see how policy touches their lives because we haven’t learned to talk about it in ways that feel real. When that happens, communities stop seeing their own power, coalitions lose momentum, and change feels out of reach. We get stuck in policy quicksand. Far too often, we're busy and brilliant, but not moving the needle.

Framing isn’t an afterthought. It’s a strategy. The way we communicate about policy should live inside the work itself: in our research, our organizing, and our advocacy. When framing is missing, misunderstanding grows and misinformation fills in.

For advocates, especially in the South, framing can be challenging. Here, audiences are diverse and skeptical for good reason. People have lived through generations of promises that never reached them, programs that excluded them, and policies that used the right language but the wrong intent. That history shapes how folks listen and what they believe is possible.

The issues we work on—tax reform, education, healthcare, economic justice—are complicated. They don’t fit into sound bites. But when we talk about them in ways that feel familiar, grounded, and honest, we bridge the gap between lived experience and public systems.

That is what good framing does. It connects the moral why of our work to the policy how in a way that moves people to act. It’s not the only solution, but it is one we too often overlook. Framing is what turns alignment into action and action into policy change.

At Chase Gen Strategy Consultants, we help organizations build that clarity. We work with nonprofits and coalitions to translate complex issues into stories that make sense, sound true, and move policy forward. Because impact doesn’t start with a bill. It starts with how we tell the story.