Policy Change Model + Asset-Framing

Understanding How to Create a Policy Agenda

Raben Policy Change Model & Asset-Framing.pdf

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This guide was created with support from Nellie Mae Education Foundation and the New Commonwealth Fund.

A policy agenda is a set of issues or proposals that policymakers prioritize for action. You can strengthen your policy agenda by integrating Asset-Framing®. This means maintaining a consistent focus on the aspirations and contributions you want to achieve or build upon before incorporating the

challenges and problems you want to address. Defining people, places, and issues by their aspirations and contributions, rather than focusing on their challenges, prevents social stigma from attaching to

them.

Removing or greatly reducing stigma has been key to historic policy changes on deeply divided and entrenched issues, such as passing marriage equality acts across the country and restoring voting and

human rights to people after they’ve completed their sentences for crimes.

In the examples above and others, the Asset-Framed policies and campaigns appealed across party lines to achieve major victories where traditional deficit-framed appeals had consistently failed.

Any effective policy agenda understands the concepts outlined below and the structures that surround them. Defining them is not easy, but the more clearly they are defined and understood, the more efficient and effective your policy agenda will be.