Services

Public Sector Clients Political Clients Non-Profit Clients

Labor Clients Private Sector Clients

We offer a wide range of research services, including:

• Telephone Surveys
  
• On-line Surveys
  
• Paper/Mail Surveys
  
• Intercept Interviews
  
• Media Testing
  
• Focus Groups
  
• Strategic Consulting
  
• For Public Sector Clients

For Public Sector Clients

Goodwin Simon Strategic Research provides opinion research services for:

• Cities
  
• Counties
  
• Flood Control Districts
  
• School Districts
  
• College Districts
  
• Federal Agencies
  
• State Agencies
  
• Environmental Agencies
  

Our work for public sector clients includes:

• Resident customer satisfaction studies, which municipalities such as Santa Monica, Fresno, Hayward, and Spokane have used for setting priorities, budgeting, policy decisions, and to assess progress in improving customer satisfaction among city residents.
  
• Public employee workplace satisfaction studies, which cities such as Santa Monica and Fresno have used to help assess and improve workplace morale, working conditions, and services for employees.
  
• Bond and tax ballot measure campaigns, which agencies use to generate funding for vital public services. We’ve helped pass more than 30 bond and tax measures for public agencies, raising more than $200 million for school districts, college districts, flood control districts, counties, and other public agencies.
  
• Social marketing to help alter public behavior on issues such as water conservation, recycling, storm water pollution, composting, use of low-flow toilets, energy conservation, earthquake insurance, and pedestrian safety. We’ve conducted more than 40 such studies for public agencies, including the San Jose Environmental Services Department and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works.
  
• Policy evaluation, to help public agencies evaluate policy options such as preferred voting days, establishment of municipal renewable energy providers, water recycling, acceptable vendors in parks, commercial recycling options, expanded environmental regulations, investments in new facilities such a San Jose’s new City Hall, school discipline options, public transit options, and health care options.
  
• Program or service evaluation. GSSR has helped evaluate programs across the state, from San Jose’s award-winning Recycle Plus residential recycling collection program to Los Angeles County’s Environmental Defender program, which as been shown to hundreds of thousands of elementary school children.
  

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For Political Clients

Goodwin Simon Strategic Research partners collectively have over 40 years of experience helping to elect candidates to office at all levels of government and to pass ballot measures in California and in 15 other states across the nation.

We’ve developed a niche for providing smart, effective, and targeted advice to help candidates and ballot measure campaigns. We work closely with mail and media consultants to develop ballot measure concepts, and to craft winning campaign strategies and messages.

We’ve become favorite pollsters not only for state legislative candidates and caucuses in Washington, California, Minnesota, Ohio, and Florida, but also for organizations investing in independent expenditure campaigns such as the California Progressive Alliance, the California League of Conservation Voters, the California Teachers Association, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, EMILY’s List and many other labor unions.

We also use our policy backgrounds to help put meat on the bones of future ballot measures. We’ve helped develop ballot measures on health care reform, education reform and education funding, conservation and open space efforts, campaign finance, penal code reform, historic preservation, and more.

Services we provide to campaigns include:

• Candidate and ballot measure feasibility studies
  
• Baseline campaign polls
  
• Tracking polls
  
• Message and advertising testing in focus groups and on line
  
• Strategic consulting on message and fundraising
  

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For Non-Profit Clients

GSSR has a long history of work with nonprofit and issue advocacy clients. We offer assistance in:

• Research to support policy agendas in education, health care, transportation, the environment, and other issues.
  
• Research to pass ballot measures
  
• Research to improve public outreach and communications strategies.
  

Here are some examples:

• We are working with the American Lung Association to help pass laws across the state of California to create smoke-free areas in public and multi-unit housing.
  
• We worked with the environmental group Clean Water Action to help it assess the effectiveness of its 2004 get out the vote effort in Michigan.
  
• We worked with the Santa Monica Conservancy to help it pass a measure to protect the city’s historic preservation ordinance.
  
• We are working with the Los Angeles County Children’s Health Initiative to assist in its efforts to enroll every child in the county in a health insurance program.
  
• We worked with the Campaign for Sensible Sentencing to help pass ballot measures to eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing for non-violent drug offenders.
  
• We worked with Defenders of Wildlife on gaining public support for reintroducing wolves to their native habitats in the lower 48 states.
  
• We worked with the Tech Museum of San Jose to help it evaluate likely visitation rates when it opened its new building in downtown San Jose.
  
• We conduct an annual study of members for the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (whose members create TV commercials) to help it evaluate the economic impact of the commercial production businesses on the U.S. economy.
  

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For Labor Clients

GSSR has worked with many of national, state, and local union organizations.

Here are some examples of our work with these clients:

• We are currently working with the UCLA Institute of Industrial Relations to help labor in Southern California increase public support for its policy agenda.
  
• We are among the researcher often chosen by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor to assist with political and policy campaigns, including the effort to defeat L.A. secession, stopping efforts to privatize municipal services, and stopping Wal-Mart in Inglewood.
  
• We have worked with local labor and progressive coalitions in Southern California to enact and defend Living Wage ordinances.
  
• We have worked with the California Teachers Association to assist in improving its Teachers for Healthy Kids program, which seeks to ensure that all kids get enrolled in a public or private health insurance program.
  
• We conducted research across five states for the State Strategies Fund Foundation on the role of labor unions in state-based multi-issue coalitions.
  
• We have done extensive research for union organizing efforts, including both internal and external organizing campaigns, and research among union members, represented non-members, and unrepresented workers.
  

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For Private Sector Clients

When a private sector project interacts with the public sector, voter research is often critical to the success of the project.

GSSR’s partners have conducted research for numerous land use projects that required public approval by municipal agencies or by a vote of the people. These include:

• Santa Monica Place
  
• The Millennium Project
  
• Playa Vista
  
• Piers 27-31
  
• Stanly Ranch
  

We also conduct research for companies seeking to explore public reaction to a new product, service, or proposed idea.

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