Faith and Advocacy: Designing Tools for Coalition Growth and Narrative Power
Overview
reimagine collective partnered with Faith in Public Life (FPL) and Faith in Public Life Action (FPLA) to develop a comprehensive research and data framework identifying influential faith leaders and their capacity to mobilize communities for advocacy. This project informed and strengthened FPL/A’s national coalition strategy by researching and identifying highly influential faith leaders across the United States.
reimagine collective delivered more than baseline research. We provided FPL/A with actionable coalition building tools including: heat maps, databases, and evaluation systems. These tools allowed the organization to strategically engage leaders, expand its geographic reach, and amplify its advocacy impact across diverse faith traditions.
Our Approach
We began with a landscape analysis that mapped hundreds of faith leaders across all 50 states, D.C., and U.S. territories using demographic data, social listening, and interviews. From the start, we practiced deep listening while working closely with the FPL/A team, ensuring that our research reflected both the organization’s goals and the lived realities of diverse faith communities.
Our approach was intentionally detailed and adaptive. We paid close attention to the nuances within different faith traditions, recognizing the cultural, theological, and community-specific differences that shape how leaders communicate and organize with their congregations. This sensitivity helped us design tools that are not only strategic, but also authentic and usable in real-world coalition-building.
From there, we:
Identified influential leaders and categorized them into regional and issue-based lists.
Created coalition-building tools including audience maps, keyword/messaging research, and social media influence analysis.
Built interactive heat maps in Looker that visualize leader influence and overlay congressional district data for advocacy alignment.Designed a vetting rubric with Likert-scale scoring to evaluate and prioritize leaders by alignment with coalition goals.
Throughout the project, our team refined research criteria, incorporated new data sources, and tailored our deliverables to meet FPL/A’s evolving needs. The result was a set of tools that combined rigorous research with cultural and religious nuance, giving the coalition both accuracy and depth in their outreach strategies.
Impact
This project gave FPL/A a research-backed system for coalition growth that moves beyond surface-level relationship-building. The tools we developed allow FPL/A to:
Prioritize leaders with the highest advocacy potential.
Expand outreach to underserved regions and underrepresented faith traditions.
Tailor messaging strategies to resonate with specific leaders and their communities.
Align coalition activities with congressional priorities through integrated mapping.
Track and measure coalition impact over time using data visualization and ongoing research updates.
Our research also contributed to broader conversations across the field. reimagine collective and FPL/A presented research findings on a panel at the Narrative Power Summit addressing the challenges of progressive messaging. We shared how progressive communications often feel academic or abstract, leaving behind faith communities and the everyday language that resonates. Our work with FPL/A demonstrated what’s possible when research and strategy are grounded in faith, shared values, and lived experiences.
This project not only strengthened FPL/A’s coalition-building capacity, but also helped shape the field’s understanding of how to build authentic, resonant narratives at a national level.
“reimagine collective built out a recruitment process for our national coalition, researched individual faith leaders to recruit, analyzed effective/impactful faith-based messages for integration into our organizational messaging, and created a kick-ass heat map of congregations across the country. I deeply appreciated the curiosity and adaptability of every member of the team — it was a joy to be on calls together because we all got to be information/data sponges together.”
— Heather Cronk, Formerly Chief Strategy Officer at Faith in Public Life
PARTNER
Faith in Public Life (FPL)
Faith in Public Life Action (FPLA)
TEAM
AJ Titong
Elaine Kathryn Andres
Julia Lee-Hong
Kifah Shah
Laura Li
SERVICES
Faith Leader Research and Database Design Mapping
Landscape Analysis
Audience Profiling
Narrative Research and Key Messaging Search
Coalition Building Rubric and Calculator Design
