When policy meets communications: how research can move people to action

At Women for Women International, amplifying the voices of women survivors of war is central to everything we do.

Across our global policy, advocacy, fundraising and communications work, we prioritise listening to women’s lived experiences and combining their expertise with research, programme data and storytelling.

But our insights can only create change when people engage – when they’re moved to act. That is why collaboration between policy and communications teams is not optional, but essential.

Groundbreaking research: From Asking to Action

Since 2024, our Global Policy and Advocacy team have been platforming the insights of over 6,500 women we consulted in 14 countries affected by conflict. With the support of 54 women’s rights organisations, this consultation, From Asking to Action, reached marginalised women whose expertise is far too often excluded from decision-making spaces.

The consultation included themes such as violence against women, access to gender-sensitive aid, peacebuilding and what visions of a peaceful future look like.

The findings were at once deeply concerning – particularly in the context of global aid cuts, where only 39% of the women we spoke to reported receiving any form of relief or recovery assistance – but also profoundly hopeful.

These findings make a clear case for integrating the priorities of women living in conflict into long‑term peacebuilding, through sustained investment, time and trust.

Policy influence

Our priority was to ensure these insights reached those with the power to act, so we launched the report on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2024. The findings have gone on to inform discussions across global, regional and national policy spaces, including:

• a Westminster Hall debate led by Alice Macdonald MP, where she highlighted the finding that over 80% of women remain hopeful despite conflict
• panels at the 69^th Commission on the Status of Women, featuring partners from Sudan, Palestine and Syria
• engagement with the Gender Is My Agenda Campaign ahead of the African Union Assembly
• the East African Community Secretary‑General’s Forum
• the 2025 Humanitarian Leadership Conference in Doha.

These moments mattered. They showed what is possible when women’s expertise is amplified within policy spaces. But they also revealed a limitation: influencing decision-makers does not automatically translate into broader public engagement.

The challenge: when great research doesn’t travel

Getting that broader public engagement is not always easy. In our dream world (aside from the obvious: peace, equality and prosperity for all women), all our audience members open our marketing emails and read them until the very end. They click on the links to read our research and stories from the women we serve, and to donate. In this world, social media accommodates nuance and its users have attention spans longer than three seconds.

The reality, however, is that policy content can be technical, nuanced and written for specialist audiences. It carries critical credibility – but it doesn’t always land with supporters.

The first step is understanding your audiences, and our audience insight has told us three key things:

• People are overwhelmed by global conflict and want to believe peace is possible.
• Supporters feel strong solidarity with other women worldwide, including the women survivors of war who we serve, and want to feel closer to them.
• People want to do something – donate, sign a petition or take other meaningful action to feel helpful in this complex world.

We also know that bringing policy and communications together means addressing some real tensions:

• Policy change is long-term, whereas communications often seek immediacy.
• Precision and nuance can conflict with clarity and emotional resonance.
• Fundraising pressures demand action-oriented messaging.
• In a crowded crisis landscape, it is hard to cut through without oversimplifying.

Our March campaign: weaving policy and communications together

Women’s History Month (more widely known as ‘March’) offered an opportunity to get the public engagement From Asking to Action deserved.

As our Global Policy and Advocacy Team headed to the 70th Commission on the Status of Women  in New York, conflict dominated the headlines. Thirty years on from the Beijing Declaration and 25 years into the Women, Peace and Security Agenda, women’s expertise remains routinely excluded from peace negotiations.

Analysis included in From Asking to Action shows why that matters. When peace is declared on paper, it rarely translates into lived peace within communities. For the women we work with, peace means the freedom to learn and earn, to move without fear and to participate safely in their communities. And women aren’t waiting. They are already building peace.

For our Women’s History Month fundraising and awareness campaign, we set out to amplify this broader definition of peace and how women are already building it in their communities – leading with credible research while creating content that could travel.

What worked and lessons learnt

Our core message, that women must be involved in peacebuilding at every level and are already making great strides in their local communities, met the global moment. It allowed us to focus on urgent and escalating crises in the news while also addressing the reality that peacebuilding requires investment far beyond the lifespan of media attention. Overall, Women’s History Month brought in over US $100,000 in one-time gifts, a significant sum of unrestricted donations reaching the communities we serve and advocate with, and it enabled us to have great success securing new regular donations.

Here are some of our lessons learnt:  

• Integrate policy and communications teams from the start. Rather than our Global Communications Team brainstorming the campaign in a silo, policy colleagues joined campaign meetings from day one.
• Frontload the hard work. We invested time in distilling complex research into clear messages approved by both teams, so that our communications colleagues could easily and confidently repurpose across channels.
• Compromise with purpose. Policy colleagues let go of some nuance for short-form content, while trusting communication colleagues to preserve the research’s integrity.
• Don’t underestimate audiences. Many supporters, especially long-term donors, want the detail. Segmenting our audiences allowed us to meet people where they are – and test what lands well.
• Policy insight gives our communications credibility. Equally, our external communications give policy content wider reach. Together, they build trust, engagement and impact.

Most importantly, we owe this effort to the women who shared their expertise and insights with us.

Of the over 6,500 women we spoke to, 81% remain hopeful their situations will improve within the next five years. That hope demands collaboration and communications that move people to action.

If you’re interested in hearing more about Women for Women International’s work or want to discuss the themes in this blog further, get in touch with Anna Jarrett Rawlence, Global Policy and Advocacy Manager ([email protected]) and Deetza Elf, Fundraising and Global Communications Manager ([email protected]). We’d love to hear from you.