Summary

Common Cause Foundation is a nonprofit that works to champion human values — particularly intrinsic values like community, equality, and care for the environment — in mainstream culture. Its research focuses on how values shape engagement with social and political issues.

Body

https://www.commoncausefoundation.org

Common Cause Foundation works to unlock the potential of human values in mainstream culture, focusing on the intrinsic values that underpin care for one another and the living planet [source: common-cause-foundation]. The organization’s research programme is grounded in social psychology and investigates how values influence political behaviour, environmental action, and civic participation [source: common-cause-foundation].

A core conceptual distinction in Common Cause’s work is the difference between intrinsic values (community, love, creativity — inherently rewarding) and extrinsic values (wealth, power, status — dependent on external approval). Common Cause does not declare extrinsic values bad; rather, it documents how mainstream culture overemphasizes extrinsic values in ways that undermine social and environmental concern [source: common-cause-foundation].

Common Cause Foundation has produced several practitioner resources: the Common Cause Handbook (an accessible overview of values research and its implications for communicators), Perceptions Matter (a survey of British adults on values and perceived values), and a Values-aware Journalism Toolkit [source: common-cause-foundation]. These resources are designed for NGO communicators, journalists, and cultural organizations seeking to align their messaging with psychological research on values [source: common-cause-foundation].

The organization works with NGOs, arts and culture organizations, community groups, and government departments, providing workshops, research, and bespoke training in values-led communication [source: common-cause-foundation].

Use it for

Understanding the psychological research underpinning values-based messaging; training in how to identify and activate intrinsic values in campaign communications; producing framing guides that avoid the extrinsic-values trap; researching the values landscape of target audiences.

Related

• campaigns-vs-movements
• citizen-lobbying
• civil-resistance
• coalition-building
• constructive-programme
• framing-and-narrative
• incidencia-politica
• pillars-of-support
• power-mapping
• spectrum-of-allies
• the-campaign-cycle
• the-tactic-star
• theory-of-change
• three-and-a-half-percent-rule

Open Questions

Are Common Cause’s free resources sufficient as primary citation material, or should the wiki rely on the academic literature they cite? License status of the Values-aware Journalism Toolkit? Does Common Cause have campaigning-specific resources (as opposed to journalism/cultural sector focus)?