At 3 a.m. on Election Night 2004, a dejected Kai Stinchcombe fired off an email to the Stanford Democrats mailing list. In the message, Stinchcombe, then a doctoral student in political science and Stanford Democrats president, suggested a new, bipartisan approach to molding public policy in light of that night’s Republican victory.

He proposed creating a student-run think tank and, in a lighthearted jab at the University’s Hoover Institution, offered to name it after Hoover’s progressive-minded successor.

More than two and a half years have passed since that fateful email, and the Roosevelt Institution is now a national think-tank with over fifty chapters at campuses across the country. But with the center of attention shifting to nationwide growth, interest in the flagship Stanford chapter has waned, and the organization has refocused its goals in an effort to produce more tangible results.

“Unfortunately because of political cycles you can’t expect people to be passionate all the time,” said Eric Mitzenmacher ‘08, president of Roosevelt’s Stanford chapter. “Especially when it’s midterm season or finals.”

At a February 2005 rally called “A Rendezvous with Destiny,” over 400 students crammed into Tresidder Union’s Oak Lounge for Roosevelt’s official kickoff — a celebration of the power of student ideas, topped off with much PowerPoint and pizzazz.

The concept of a student-run think tank, rescuing ideas from classroom discussions and delivering them to the desks of legislators, seemed to resonate among the campus populace.

But Roosevelt was not immune to the attrition that tolls on every student group, and when the organization quickly outgrew its initial framework, momentum stalled.

Some students, frustrated by a lack of progress in policy making, searched for another way to make a difference. Others, inundated by the constant demands of classes and social obligations, simply did not have enough time to conduct policy research.

Vilas Rao ‘07, a former communications director for the organization, said he moved on after studying overseas and admitted he wanted to spend more time with friends. Others, like Devon Swezey ‘08, a former director of the Center on Clean Politics and Voting Rights, said it was difficult to devote significant time to the group when immediate results failed to materialize.

“They have gotten a lot of stuff done, but it’s often been a very slow process and sometimes you wonder what you are doing it for, and how it is affecting anything,” Swezey said. “I think that the major draw initially was that it was more than a club on campus. It was something where you could actually effect change with your fellow students.”

GROWING PAINS

Roosevelt’s initial success caught some of its founders by surprise.

“We very deliberately did not want to become a national chapter organization,” Stinchcombe said. “We also didn’t know if it was going to work. What we decided was, ‘We’ll give it a try.’”

Nonetheless, the organization soon found itself bursting at the seams. After co-launching at Yale and Stanford, chapters sprang up throughout the Ivy League and many larger public schools like UC-Davis and UC-Berkeley. Several of the original organizers, including Stinchcombe and current Roosevelt President Quinn Wilhelmi, a former Stanford undergraduate student, moved on to become national leaders of the group, leaving the Stanford chapter without some of its strongest legs.

“Had we stayed here there would have been more people working on the Stanford effort,” Stinchcombe mused, before adding: “I think the chapter is still very strong.”

As one of the founding chapters, Stanford was the guinea pig for Roosevelt’s policy making efforts. Combined with what Mitzenmacher called the “experience drain” to Roosevelt’s national front, the chapter reinvented itself several times in its early months to experiment with different means for turning ideas into policy.

“We really grew too quickly to support ourselves,” Mitzenmacher said. “We’re just ambitious, but we’ve been very lucky. We’ve hit a lot of roadblocks but are very young.”

The organization initially focused its efforts on producing 20-page policy papers for its journal, The Roosevelt Review, a hefty task for any student already busy with coursework and other extracurriculars.

Mitzenmacher admitted that the process seemed “intimidating,” and said the organization has refashioned itself by taking “more incremental steps toward a solution.”

“It’s a lot easier for students to get involved now,” he said.

GOING LOCAL, NATIONALLY

Although it was founded without national aspirations, the organization still had an eye on influencing federal policy. But Roosevelt’s leaders soon realized that the manpower and expertise of the Washington heavyweights and professional think tanks proved formidable.

“The saying is that ‘all politics are local,’ and I think to a certain extent that’s true,” said Spencer Sherman, a Yale graduate and co-president of Roosevelt’s chapter there.

Roosevelt’s leaders are quick to cite the Yale chapter as a shining example of the organization’s retooled focus on state and local politics. Last spring, the chapter produced an economic analysis for the New Haven city government on a proposed change to the city’s living wage ordinance. And earlier this month the group helped push a plan to change Connecticut’s Earned Income Tax Credit through two committees in the state legislature.

Despite the much larger hurdles in dealing with the California State Legislature, Stinchcombe said he considers the state’s progressive politics an easy match for Roosevelt policy proposals. And while Washington is filled with think tanks, analysts and consulting firms, Roosevelt can fill a need at the lower levels of government.

“There’s a hunger for that sort of information at the state and local level,” he said. “I would say probably not at the federal level, but I would be happy if I was proven wrong.”

With chapters nationwide, however, Roosevelt can coordinate grass roots initiatives in multiple locales, effectively fostering national policy while still maintaining a local focus.

“It’s a national organization, but really local in nature,” said Kyle Atwell, former head of the UC-Davis chapter and current Western regional chair. “There’s a huge gap when it comes to local policies and local issues. No one’s really doing the research there.”

PROGRESSIVE PROGRESS

Along with its focus on local policy, Roosevelt has also narrowed down its energies to three primary initiatives, dubbed the first annual Roosevelt Challenges: clean energy, access to higher education and working families. The idea, organizers said, was to aim for more incremental, but tangible, results.

“It’s really easy to want to take on everything,” Atwell said. “The fact of the matter is Roosevelt went for a year and a half with only a couple major projects. But now every program is tailored to these issues, and I think that’s what makes us able to come up with concrete results.”

Mitzenmacher said the Stanford chapter would also likely pare down its nine policy centers — the discussion groups that collaborate, analyze and propose policy efforts.

“We really still want people who want to write their dream policy,” he said of keeping as many policy centers as possible, “but that’s not a sustainable structure.”

Roosevelt piggybacked on the recent Energy Crossroads conference, hosting a policy conference tied in with the institution’s energy challenge. A number of student presenters offered their policy proposals, a sign that the narrow focus was paying dividends for research and progress.

Despite the institutional adjustments, the heart of the organization — turning students’ ideas into policy — has not changed.

“I would say that Stanford students spend too much time on policy-relevant things not to make a difference,” Stinchcombe said. “The point is not how well you know the topic, the point is that you had a good idea. If you have 6,000 college students, you can probably come up with some relatively good ones.”

And to that end, Roosevelt still presents a unique opportunity for college students looking to make a difference.

“Last year I didn’t know what my major was,” Sherman said. “But I was part of an organization that almost got a multi-million dollar bill passed through the state legislature. How many students can say that?"