Awareness is not enough

How can we move from generating awareness to driving action in foster care, adoption and family support?

This is an exciting time here in the US — it’s National Foster Care Month! Often, the month of May is focused on raising awareness for the needs of vulnerable children and families. 

But … did you know that May is also National Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Jewish American Heritage Month, ALS Awareness Month, Skin Cancer Awareness Month, National Wildfire Awareness Month, National Cystic Fibrosis Awareness Month, Celiac Disease Awareness Month, National Brain Tumor Awareness Month, Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month, Lyme Disease Awareness Month, Blood Pressure Education Month, Mental Health Awareness Month, Women’s Health Month and more?

Phew! I’m tired just thinking about all the awareness being raised. 

Why awareness isn’t enough

All of these listed above are good and necessary causes, of course. But what is one to do with all this awareness? 

If you’re like the average person, the answer to the above question is “hardly anything.”

I mean, you may be slightly more aware of the realities of things like skin cancer, motorcycle accidents and cystic fibrosis. But to what degree does mere awareness actually make a difference in the long term?

Becoming aware of a cause is a necessary first step, but it does not mean that we will get involved or, frankly, even give much thought to it on a regular basis. 

For example: there’s a big difference between being knowledgeable about the importance of women’s health and actually incorporating the right sleep, exercise, vitamins and nutrition into your life. You may know data and facts about motorcycle safety, but that doesn’t ensure you will wear a helmet the next time you ride. You can learn about the dangers of wildfires, yet still go camping this weekend without the knowledge and tools needed to safely start and extinguish a fire. 

It’s one thing to be aware of something; it’s an entirely different thing to actually do something about it. 

The awareness spiral

For ages, the predominant thought in the advocacy world has been that awareness inevitably translates into action. If we can just make people aware of an issue, they’ll get involved, right? The logic makes sense; after all, it’s hard to get involved in something you don’t know about. But the expectation that by simply increasing knowledge we can guarantee behavior change is insufficient at best and disheartening at worst. 

You see, we’re expecting awareness to do something that awareness alone does not have the capacity to do: to change hearts and minds.

We’ve all been there: we work hard to tell our audience about the needs and opportunities to get involved, only to find that of the hundred people in the room, a mere two show up to the follow-up info session (and one of them by accident — she was actually trying to find the women’s Bible study down the hall!).

It’s discouraging and frustrating. Left unchecked, it may even breed a bit of anger or resentment. We might be tempted to think, “What’s wrong with these people?! Why don’t they care about the things God cares about?!” 

At this point, you may have some very honest conversations with God about whether what you’re doing is actually working or worth it. You start to contemplate a career change — maybe you should get a job at your local ice cream shop! After all, everyone who walks into an ice cream shop is generally pretty excited about what’s about to happen. It would feel so good to not have to raise awareness about how great ice cream is; everyone is already on board! 

Sounds nice, right? Now, let me pull you back to reality. 

I don’t mean to suggest that raising awareness is wrong; I simply want to illustrate that it’s insufficient in and of itself. I also don’t mean to tempt you to quit your job. What you’re doing is absolutely worth it, and I am confident it’s having an impact far beyond what you can see at this moment. 

Moving beyond awareness

In this space of mobilizing the Church to care for vulnerable children and families, the first and perhaps most foundational thing for us to recognize is this:

We are not in the awareness-raising and recruitment business; we are in the discipleship and formation business.

This means that when we raise awareness, we do so in order to serve a greater purpose: to see hearts and lives transformed. That’s the mission of the Church — to make disciples — and it is ultimately our mission, as well. 

We don’t come to churches asking them to get involved in what we’re doing. Instead, we ask how we can get involved in what they’re doing.

And what they’re doing is discipleship and mission. So we want to do that too, as co-laborers working alongside them. 

Our work is not just about ensuring people understand the data, stats and needs. It’s also about helping them experience the transforming and live-giving power of participating with God in Kingdom work here on earth. 

We’re not simply producing aware activists; we are working to form faithful disciples.

This process of formation and discipleship is slow; immediate results can feel underwhelming at times. And that can be discouraging when the needs around us are real and require immediate attention. In those moments, our natural response is to try to churn up more awareness-raising activity in hopes of producing faster results. 

This is well-intentioned, but insufficient. 

You see, we’re not in the business of getting more people involved faster. Rather, we’re in the business of partnering with the Church to get the right people involved longer and in more meaningful, sustainable and transformative ways.

Want to design your own couch?

I once learned about an online furniture company that largely appealed to people living in small apartments in urban contexts like New York City and Chicago. These residents did not have easy access to large furniture stores, and those stores likely wouldn’t carry smaller, custom-sized pieces that could fit perfectly in a microscopic apartment. 

To solve for these problems, the company created an online platform on which customers could design their own unique couches, with the exact style and specifications they needed for their space. They could then get that couch delivered straight to their apartment. 

Sounds great, right? 

It was! Thousands of people went online and designed their dream couch. But, as it turns out, there was a slight problem. Actually, a big problem. Very few were ordering (and subsequently paying for) the custom couch they had designed. 

This left the company asking themselves: Rather than a successful business, have we inadvertently just created the world’s best online couch-designing game?!

Trying to explain this unexpected behavior, they assumed customers were stuck on questions like: Will this couch really be worth the price? Will it be comfortable to sit on? Will it look as good in person as it does online?  

To solve what they assumed were concerns over price and quality, the company figured they would need to double down on marketing, increasing awareness of the product’s quality and getting people more emotionally attached to the value of the investment they were making.

But after surveying these “almost-customers,” what they found took them by surprise.

Overwhelmingly, for those who designed a couch but did not order it, the primary reason had nothing to do with price or quality, but everything to do with the fact that most of them already had an old couch in their apartment and no simple way to dispose of it. 

They couldn’t just drag it down several flights of stairs in their apartment complex and leave it on the curb in NYC for someone to come pick up. So until they figured out what they were going to do with the couch they already had, they weren’t in a position to order a new one. 

That was it! Not price, not quality, not appeal. Increasing awareness and marketing efforts would not have solved the actual problem customers were experiencing. They needed someone to move the thing standing in their way: their old couch.

Subsequently, as part of the total package deal, the company began offering not only to deliver the new couch, but to haul away and donate the old one as well. 

With that simple change, they saw purchases increase significantly. Their accidental “game” had now become the profitable business they intended it to be!

What do custom couches have to do with foster care?

In our space, there’s a truth we need to learn:

At some point, our audience becomes as aware as they need to be.

They have enough information to move forward…yet something is preventing them. There is some barrier, friction or perceived roadblock (like an old couch) standing in their way and keeping them from following through. 

In this moment, what they need is not for someone to increase their already-high awareness, but to help them figure out what the couch is, where it is and how to move it (or navigate around it). 

In their book Switch, authors and change management coaches Chip and Dan Heath talk about the human tendency to be opposed to things that require us to change: 

“What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity.”

Customers were not resistant to the idea of designing and ordering a custom couch online; they simply lacked the clarity they needed about how they were going to make space for it in their apartment. Once that clarity was provided, people felt confident enough to take action.

In the same way, much of our audience may not actually be resistant to the idea of getting involved in caring for vulnerable children and families; rather, they may simply lack the clarity they need to navigate through the frictions that are keeping them from moving forward. 

Navigating the friction

Perhaps it’s the fear of getting too attached that’s preventing someone from opening their home up to a child through foster care. Are they opposed to becoming a foster parent? Probably not. Do they need help overcoming this barrier that’s holding them back? Yes. And perhaps, the underlying issue has nothing to do with attachment, but rather with the fear of grief and loss they may experience if they love a child in their home and have to say goodbye. The fear of grief is the couch that needs to be moved, not the fear of attachment. 

Or maybe you have a pastor who is fully on board with the mission of your organization, but simply cannot see how the already stretched-thin staff and lay leadership could possibly add any more to their plates. This is not an issue of lack of care or support for the cause, but is rather an issue of envisioning how the church could make a meaningful impact given their current limitations. That’s the couch to help them move, perhaps by showing them that simple ways of engaging can make a significant impact over time.

Essentially, what feels like resistance may not be resistance at all. It might simply be friction. And friction is not inherently bad. In fact, it’s often the very thing God uses to help us grow the most. 

The goal is not to remove all friction from our lives or from the mission in which we are engaged. Instead, it’s to help people find the clarity they need to move forward through the friction, and grow. 

And perhaps that’s the greatest value we bring to those we serve — helping them grow. 

What common frictions do you sense or hear from the audiences you are engaging with? In what ways can you more intentionally and effectively help them “move the couch” so they can take their right next steps forward, and grow? 

– Jason Johnson is the National Director of The Pure Religion Project, facilitated by the CAFO community.

---

---