The American Message
Foundation
Our Mission
To help leaders who share core American values tell the truth well – with clarity, conviction, and confidence.
What We Do
A distinguishing feature of FDR, Clinton, and Obama was their ability to tell the truth well.
The Truth Told Well
The American Message Foundation equips leaders and advocates with emotionally resonant, research-based messages that reflect widely shared American values.
You can persuade people by lying well or telling the truth well. We have truth on our side, but too often, we tell it poorly.
In all our talk of issues and policies, we tend to hide our values in the fine print. We use acronyms and academic terms that ordinary Americans cannot define.
At the American Message, we help leaders tell the truth well, so people not only know it but feel it.
On every issue, in every setting, in every state - all the time.
How We Got Here
To learn how the far right captured the message-sphere, click here.
No Investment, No Return
Over the past 50 years, the extreme right built a powerful message machine, providing politicians with continuous messaging, shifting the center of political gravity further and further right. They replaced a view of government as protecting the interests of ordinary people to government as the problem. Now they are overwriting the Constitution with the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025.
While the far right institutionalized a powerful messaging infrastructure, we invested in think tanks focused on policy. But nothing on an institutional infrastructure to develop, test, and educate leaders on effective ways of talking about our ideas and values.
We can keep complaining about “our message problem.” Or we can rebalance our investment portfolio.
What We Offer
To counter attacks on "critical race theory," we tested all our messages against this one. It isn't easy to beat. Even Democrats agree with parts of it. Click on it and see.
This is one of seven narratives that beat it by double digits. Notice where voters of every party landed in their final 0-100 ratings. To see why the message worked, click here.
No More Guesswork
Year after year, leaders whose values are broadly progressive (e.g., those who believe everyone should have high-quality, affordable healthcare, regardless of their policy prescriptions) have had to guess and pray, take cover, or reinvent the wheel on every issue, especially in the states, where they are on their own for messaging.
Not any longer. We will provide multiple messages on all the perennial issues (e.g., immigration and abortion, taxes and national security), as well as the pseudo-issues the far right politicizes to divide and inflame, from "CRT" to "DEI."
We don't run from the fire. We take on the arsonists. And we test all our messages against the most compelling, disinforming, dog-whistling language from the opposition.
We offer leaders multiple messages on every issue, using a range of metaphors, values, and positions across the progressive "spectrum," so they can find their voice. Our work is continuous and evolving, not tied to election cycles.
The era of praying, crouching and reinventing the wheel on every issue, every year, is over.
How We’re Different
Three principles, grounded in psychology and neuroscience, are essential in designing effective messages. To learn more, click here.
It’s All in Your Head
We start with scientifically-grounded messages and end with scientifically-tested messages - all honed for their emotional resonance.
We begin with a deceptively simple question: How would you talk with people if you started with an accurate view of how our minds and brains work? That leads to a unique style of messaging. Our approach is based on The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Nation (Westen, 2007), which challenged the widely-held assumption that “an election is a debate on the issues.”
Data across psychology and neuroscience, history and political science, suggest that ideas matter - but only when linked to the emotions and values that drive us to act, and embedded in narratives that provide context and meaning.
Since then, we have honed the theory in practice, crafting and testing thousands of messages across dozens of issues with over 100,000 voters. We use multiple methods to assess their conscious and unconscious impact.
Creating Message Discipline
The far right achieves message discipline by all marching in step. Because our leaders don't take marching orders, we need a different approach to message discipline. Think Jazz: Play from the same songbook, but improvise. We encourage authenticity. As a leader, your instrument is your voice. Use it. But make sure you're playing songs people can move to. For more, click here.
Think Jazz
Politicians on the far right use talking points developed in their think tanks to fan out across the country, all using the same phrases, memes, or sentences, often at the same time. Like players in a marching band.
Too much of the time, we create what sounds like noise or discord to the public, with each player marching to a different drummer and one band blaming another when we aren't making music in a way people want to hear.
Think jazz. A marching band doesn't work for us because our leaders don't want, and wouldn't take, marching orders. We don't achieve message discipline by saying the exact same words but by offering variations on a theme – all the time, everywhere. We trumpet the values that unite us and make sure people hear shared metaphors.
Our Foundation provides well-crafted, well-tested "musical scores.” Our leaders can then choose tunes that fit their style and improvise around the scores. As the public begins to hear recognizable tunes on issue after issue in variations all around them, we build a brand from the bottom up.
Instead of an echo chamber, we provide a speakeasy.
The American Message Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that engages primarily in research, education, and training. Donations are tax-deductible as allowed by law. It is a non-partisan organization focused on core American values.
We also have a separate advocacy arm, The American Message Action Fund, which engages in political advocacy. Contributions to the Action Fund are not tax-deductible.