Keeping communication current in the not-for-profit sector
By Angela Bensemann, Director Halo Communications
We’ve just been working on a comms and marketing revamp for one of my favourite clients – Partners Porirua.
This not-for-profit organisation works to ensure rangatahi in Porirua have a positive outlook on life, in particular, their working life. They do this by bringing together role models from business and community and connecting them with young people to inspire them about their future.
We started working together in 2015 when the organisation first set up its Porirua Youth 2 Work Movement – at that stage all they had was the name of the programme. I worked with them to develop a comprehensive comms plan, set up a website and raise their profile among local employers and young people. Once we had everything up and running for the Youth 2 Work Movement, we were asked to do the same for the parent organisation – Partners Porirua.
Fast forward to 2023 and a lot has changed in the communications space meaning it was perfect timing to undertake a complete review and refresh of their comms and marketing activity.
Scaling up the team
Like any project we work on, I cherry-pick a team to meet the needs of my clients; and then project manage all the moving parts to make sure our client’s expectations are met.
We wanted to revamp the websites, rework collateral, and update their imagery.
That meant web builders Creativa, graphic design agency Pogo Design and Juliet Watterson Photography to help us develop a brilliant package for this hard working not-for profit entity.
When you work with Halo you tap into a multi-disciplinary team of comms and marketing experts that is scaled up (or down) depending on your requirements.
Website revamp
It’s interesting how thinking evolves over an eight-year period – we’ve now consolidated the two websites that Partners Porirua was maintaining. This will help avoid duplications in content and cost. It also makes it easier for the user with everything in one place. Creativa set up both original websites and it was great to work with creative director, Maribel Aburto, again on the refresh.
It’s been important to keep the brand recognition of Youth 2 Work and not lose any of its SEO juice – so although it’s now part of the Partners site it’s still easily found in its own right.
The customer journey has been paramount in our thinking this time as too have been the calls to action – something we didn’t pay too much attention to first time around.
Search engine optimisation is more important now than ever so we can be found easily so this has played a more prominent role too.
We have always had great images from this client and have enjoyed incorporating them into the new site – Juliet of Juliet Watterson Photography has taken some beautiful imagery for us over the years. Finding the right photos is often the sticking point with web builds and an over-reliance on stock imagery can really detract from your site. Investing in photography – a least a little every year – ensures a wealth of images to draw on for any big project (presentation, promotional material or your website).
This year was no different with Juliet heading out again to capture some new images to showcase young people and their achievements.
Social media strategy
Sitting down with the team we updated the communications and marketing strategy and developed a brand-new social media strategy – after all when we first started out the organisation wasn’t using social media – now it’s on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Setting up a social media strategy for your organisation can be challenging – it’s a very important tool in the marketing kit but it can be all consuming and suck up a lot of time and energy. In an ideal world you might be wanting to post on multiple platforms multiple times a week or a day. But is that realistic and is it sustainable?
In the not-for-profit space more so than in other types of organisations people will often be juggling multiple roles and social media is likely to be an add-on to the role. And while we often get seduced by the idea of ‘free’ promotion and another ‘free’, fun tool to use – anything that takes our time and focus away from meeting the objectives of our comms and marketing strategy comes with a big cost – time!
My number one tip is to ask yourself: will this post meet our objectives and add value to our clients, customers or stakeholders. If it’s a no, then don’t do it. Of course, this implies that you have already defined your objectives – you know what you are trying to achieve and you know who you are trying to reach and connect with.
Number two is to be pragmatic and realistic. Set yourself up to succeed. What is actually achievable? We don’t live in an ideal world we live in a real world. It is more important to show up consistently e.g. once a week or twice a month than it is to go gang busters and post twice daily for two weeks and then do nothing for 6 months – fail.
Number three is use your time wisely – don’t go down the rabbit hole. Working on your social media strategy might be fun but it is just one of the tools you should be using and it is easy to spend a lot of time without purpose.
Hardcopy collateral still has a place
Yes, there is still a place for hard-copy collateral. Working with Jane from Pogo Design, Partners Porirua has updated its existing collateral – postcards, business cards, pull up banners and its flagship celebration document.
We also worked on new brochures promoting its services. With two such different audiences: young people aged 15-25 and employers, educators and community organisations, we opted to produce two simple DL brochures.
Essentially talking about the same services each brochure has a different look and feel aimed at the different audiences. The team’s youth coaches had a heavy input into the youth version and rightly so. We all know you need to put yourself in the audience’s shoes and the best way to do that is to take a lead from those that know.
And then there was the flagship document: Celebrating Success. The first one of these we did was a couple of years ago. It started off being titled 20 years of success but due to Covid and production difficulties it was renamed 21 years which when you think about it was much more apt to celebrate a 21st.
This time we’ve made it more generic – a vehicle to promote everything the organisation does, celebrate the successes for young people and the organisation’s successes too.
Overlapping with the website it is good to be able to repurpose content across different mediums.
Fit for purpose
The not-for-profit sector is an extremely rewarding space to be working in – we love it. We’re also realistic about what can be achieved and the importance of setting organisations up to be self sustaining in the communications and marketing space. Budgets are often cobbled together from grants and external funding. The needs of their clients are huge but budgets aren’t and thinking needs to be lateral.
If you’d like help with your communications and marketing activities get in touch.
