Busara’s Low-Cost Message Testing Guidebook, launching today, provides a step-by-step process that supports civil society organizations in effectively communicating. The Guidebook, developed in close collaboration with Busara’s partners from civil society, responds to the need to find effective ways of crafting and testing advocacy messages. These could include, for example, messages on youth programs, civic engagement, and economic empowerment.

‘As a behavioral research organization working closely with CSOs, we wanted to find an effective and scalable way to share resources and insights from behavioral science to make a difference in how these organizations communicate,’ said Salim Kombo, Engagement Director at Busara. ‘Knowing how to communicate with an audience is crucial for civil society actors–individuals and organizations–who are working in research, communications, and social interventions. With this guide book, we want to offer a freely available tool that is easy to use and can really change what advocacy messaging might look like.’

To make use of the guidebook as easy as possible, the guidebook is downloadable at no cost in English and Kiswahili. The guidebook is enhanced by an interactive website that offers further resources on how to craft and test messages for increased engagement.

The Guidebook marks a major step in Busara’s support for practitioners. In fulfilling its mandate to be a research, design and advisory organization that pursues a future where global human development activities respond to people’s lived experience, Busara practices and promotes interdisciplinary behavioral science in ways that center and value the perspectives of respondents; expand the practice of research where it is  applied; and build networks, processes, and tools that increase the competence of  practitioners and researchers. To learn more about this guidebook, sign up for an upcoming webinar on August 29 from 11 to 1 PM.