Table of Contents >
   Part C. Promoting Interest and Participation in Initiativ... >
      Chapter 6. Promoting Interest in Community Issues >
         Section 1. Developing a Plan for Communication >
             Main Section - Introduction, what, why, when, who, and how. >

Developing a Plan for Communication

  

Main Section

Why do we need better communication?

What is a plan for communication?

Why should you develop a plan for communication?

When should you develop a plan for communication?

How do you develop a plan for communication?



Why do we need better communication?


Communication is the process of transmitting ideas and information about your initiative throughout the community.

This doesn't mean merely advertising or promoting your program, but communicating the true nature of what your organization is about. If your organization wants to achieve its goals, you will surely want to get your message out to your target population and beyond.

You may have several different reasons for wanting to do this, depending on what kind of an initiative or organization yours is.

Take a hard look at your program. It may be good, but do you think that everyone who should know about it really does? To raise the level of awareness about your initiative, you will need to communicate what you're all about.

To do this, you should have a plan. It will certainly make your life much easier in the long run.

This section will attempt to show you how to create such a plan, and future sections in this chapter will help you with more specific aspects of communication plans.

Sections 2 through 19 in Chapter 6: Promoting Interest in Community Issues will show you everything, from how to prepare press releases to developing creative promotions to conducting community forums on health and community development issues.


What is a plan for communication?

Planning is a way to organize actions that will lead to the fulfillment of a goal. (For more information on planning in general, see Chapter 8: Developing a Strategic Plan.) Developing a plan for communication is one specific example of planning principles.

Your goal in this case is to get the word out to the people you're aiming at and beyond in order to make the most out of your initiative's long-term benefits to your community. If you have created something of value, you want it to do more than merely be recognized; you want it to be used by the community. Isn't that why it was created in the first place? In any case, there's a lot to do.

Developing a plan for communication will lead to you ask yourself about certain aspects of your program. Use the answers to these questions to help you make your plan:

  • What are your goals?
  • Who is your target audience?
  • What are your accomplishments?
  • What publicity have you received to date?
  • How can your organization best get the message out?
  • How much money do you have to work with?
  • What are some obstacles you may encounter? And how can you get around them?

Our Teen Pregnancy Prevention Through Fun Activities initiative is going really well. Everyone is excited and we feel that we have achieved some success, although we wonder why the number of young girls involved is so small. The local high school has nearly 1000 girls within the ages of 14 and 17, yet only 40 girls are actively involved in the program, while another 20 have shown up to one or two activities.

We've been racking our brains to figure out why so few girls have gotten involved. The girls who are involved say that they love it; they're doing better in school, and so far not one of them has become pregnant. They tell us that the after-school activities we have planned for them are really fun. In that sense we feel that we have achieved success; however we feel that we have somewhat failed at getting enough young girls into the program.

If we don't do something soon to raise our numbers, the corporation that is providing us with space will either mix our group in with another youth program, or give the space away to another program altogether. The space donation was contingent upon having a certain level of involvement. It is clear that we have to get more young girls involved, but how? Where do we start?

Here's the key point: It will help us to make a plan to communicate as thoroughly as possible the goals of our initiative to our target population if we want it to be around in the future.


Why should you develop a plan for communication?


You may have the best program ideas in the world, but if nobody knows about it and takes advantage of it, then your ideas have no practical value at all. You must remember however, that communicating your initiative's goals will not necessarily solve all of your problems. Getting the word out will help you attract people, but you have to give them a reason to keep coming back.

Here are some reasons as for why you should develop a plan for communication:

  • Plans help you map out how to get from point A (an unknown or under-utilized initiative) to point B (a well-known initiative overflowing with involvement and activity).
  • A plan will make your communication efforts more efficient, effective, and lasting. A plan is important because it focuses on the set of steps you will need to go through to achieve your ultimate goal. A planned effort will almost always be superior to an unplanned, disorganized attempt.
  • Finally, developing a plan to get the word out about your organization will almost certainly be easier than trying to start a new program.

Tip: Writing things down is very important to the planning process because you are sure to have a lot on your mind, and you don't want to waste time going over questions you have already answered. If you write down the answers to questions as you go, you will save time.


When should you develop a plan for communication?

A.S.A.P. As soon as your organization begins planning its objectives and activities, you should also begin planning ways to communicate them to your intended audience and beyond. This is because successful communication is an ongoing process, not a one-time event.

You probably want to start communicating saying what your organization or initiative is about, once you have a pretty good idea of what it is. If you are planning a kick-off event, it is important that you start publicizing your initiative and event as soon as possible. You want people to show up, don't you?

If your organization has been around for a while, you may want to renew public interest in it. You should start on a plan to do so. What are your new communication goals?

And are you looking for funding? If so, wouldn't this be a good time to communicate the nature and accomplishments of your initiative to possible funding sources? The right kind of public exposure sure would be helpful here, wouldn't it?


How do you develop a plan for communication?


There are basically seven steps you can take in order to create a plan for communication. We will go through them one step at a time, and show you how the answers to them can be used.

Step 1: Ask yourself, what are your goals?

Not all initiatives or organizations are the same. The need to raise awareness about your organization depends a lot on your goals.

  • What do you hope to accomplish?
  • Why do you want more people to know about your organization?
  • Are you looking for people to get involved?
  • Are you looking for funding sources?
  • Do you want to tell the world that your program is working?

There's little doubt you will have some answers to these questions. Otherwise, you would probably not have decided that your organization needed to think about communication.

Example 1:

You're part of an initiative to distribute donated blankets to the homeless in your city during the winter. "Operation Blanket" started last winter, although donations were very low. The initiative had 15 dedicated volunteers, although very few blankets ever showed up at the 10 donation drop-off points throughout the city. To make things worse, several volunteers showed up at the donation drop-off spots to find the bright green barrels filled with fast-food wrappers and other assorted trash.

This sounds discouraging, but let's examine it. Maybe "Operation Blanket" would have had better results if it had had better communication.

For example, the bright green barrels were placed mainly outside convenience stores and fast food restaurants. The only form of advertising the initiative used was flyers around the city. The bright green posters were almost completely destroyed after the first snow storm the city endured, and "Operation Blanket" made the decision not to re-poster the city because its leaders figured that people already knew about it. Also, the bright green barrels were marked "O.B." and looked like the new trash cans the city recently put on sidewalks and street corners. The city's "clean city" campaign had been well publicized, too.

Had "Operation Blanket" gotten the word out to more people and made it more clearly known what it and its bright green barrels were about, the volunteers who had donated their time for it would have spent more time passing out blankets and less time washing barrels. "This year," its leaders vowed, "things will be different."

How can this organization develop a communication plan so that things will really be different?

Example 2:

Your intergenerational day care program has been around for a year and a half. You knew that it would not be easy to solve the day care problems of poor working mothers while at the same time providing enjoyable, fulfilling part-time work for senior citizens, but you thought it was worth a try. And look at the success of the program so far.

It's easy to look at the smiles on the children's faces, the look of satisfaction in the senior citizen's eyes, and the sense of relief the working mothers express when they come to pick their children up at the end of a long working day. However, your funding source can only see that your grant money is running out at the end of the year.

You know you need another grant, but you also know that you have a great program. The funders would have to be crazy to not renew the grant or increase the funding for that matter.

What you must do is make the funders realize what you know. At this point it is clear that positive publicity will increase your chances of getting grant money for your program.

Well-executed communication will really help you out here. It will raise awareness about your organization and increase the likeliness of your grant being renewed. You might even get other funding sources interested in backing your program.

So now you know that communication is helpful. But what do you do from here?

Step 2: Ask yourself: who is your target audience?

Who does your organization wish to inform about its existence, goals, services, and needs?

The answer to that question will tell you who your target audience is (For more, see Chapter 18, Section 3: Identifying Targets and Agents of Change: Who Can Benefit and Who Can Help).

Getting the word out is important. But getting the word out to the people you want to involve is even more important. So you must decide who those people are and plan accordingly. Your communication plan should be aimed at those who will benefit most from your organization's work.

Who will benefit the most?

Probably the people with the greatest need for your group's services or activities. Also the people who have expressed the most interest in what you are doing. And also those people who based on past experience (of your own group or others) have acted upon your message before. These three factors of need, interest, and past experience will help you determine your target audience.

Based on that analysis, your target audience may be very specific or very broad. But in any case, you must cater your communication plan to the target audience that you have identified.

Example:

You are part of a city-wide initiative to lower the rate of high blood pressure in unemployed war veterans through free blood pressure screenings. The grant you are working with is very specific in that it wants your initiative to target unemployed war veterans. Does that help you develop your plan for communication? You bet it does!

You have to plan to frame what your message is so that it will be appealing to unemployed war veterans.

Step 3: Ask yourself, what are your accomplishments?

When you start planning to make your community more aware of what your organization is about, it's an especially good time to step back and survey what you have accomplished so far. Look at what you've accomplished and what you haven't. Challenge your organization and the public to do more.

By looking at what your initiative has done, you should be able to get a good mental image of what you're all about. By seeing your successes and possibly re-examining some mistakes you may have made along the way, you should get a good idea about where you are and where you're going. Communicate this to your audience. If you want more involvement, make that very clear.

Take those accomplishments and use them to plan. Look at what you've done and try to see how better communication could improve aspects of your initiative. Your accomplishments should help you to grow.

Example:

The free minority leadership education and training program our organization has provided for the city has had remarkable success in its first two years of existence. Southeast Asians have formed two neighborhood organizations since the beginning of the program and Latinos have formed three throughout the city. All of the leaders of the newly formed organizations graduated from our program. Our funding source has even agreed to support the program for another three years.

There's no doubt that we can consider our program a success, but how can it be improved? After taking a hard look at our program, we must look to the challenges our program will face in the future.

First off, we provided a good variety of general education and leadership training courses, but we have not yet decided which courses make up the core curriculum. Also, our first graduating class of 15 consisted of the most energetic, outspoken members of their respective minority communities. We must decide the focus of our program so we can promote it correctly. If we promote our program as being only a leadership training program we may have very few participants. If we promote our program as being for general educational purposes we may alienate those who may wish to be leaders.

How can we use this information to help us develop a plan to get more prospective minority leaders involved? It is clear that we have to decide where we are going with our initiative and promote it as such. Only effective communication will bring participants into our program.

Wow! This is simple. We're just about starting to have a plan. What's next?

Step 4: Ask yourself: what publicity have you received to date?

Who knows about your initiative? What do they know about it?

Let's hope your organization isn't the best-kept secret in the world. Your organization has probably worked very hard and the more people who know about its existence the better.

Remember: You want people to know. You want your name in people's minds. If your initiative is quiet, people may wonder why. If you want new members or participants, keeping quiet is not the way to go about it. If people don't know about your organization, there is no way they're going to get involved. You want them involved, so tell them about it!

How should you let people know about it? Well, that depends partly on you, and partly on your audience. You may want to put flyers on every car in the city, advertise in the newspaper or on radio, participate in a demonstration, or even arrange a press conference to proclaim the existence of your program or initiative. Your choice should depend upon what publicity has worked before and also on the resources you have available. But it is most important to aim your message at those who you are trying to get involved.

For example: Using radio or television advertising during school hours is probably not the best way to involve your city's youth.

Example 1:

Terry's initiative is not going so well. Terry is trying to get the city to construct a new playground in his neighborhood. Terry has about five die-hard helpers. They have been battling with the Department of Neighborhood Services of their city for several months with no results. Every time they attend a city council meeting they are prepared to discuss their case, however, when they mention it under new business, they are met with blank faces. Council members are unaware of the initiative.

Their work is in fact the best-kept secret in town. What can they do to try to put pressure on the Department of Neighborhood services to actually act on their requests, or at least give them an answer?

Communication may be the answer! There are two neighborhood associations within Terry's neighborhood that aren't even aware of the playground initiative. Terry and his five die-hard helpers could sure use their support. To get it, the associations have to become aware of the initiative.

The general public should be made aware as well. Many residents may back the playground idea 100%, but if they don't know about it, they will never be able to support it.

Communication is crucial here. Terry and his helpers will probably not make any headway any time soon if they do not gather support for their initiative. Initiatives that do not gather support can't easily make progress. And initiatives that don't make progress may stumble and fall.

Megumi's initiative is having better luck.

Example 2:

Megumi's initiative, A.K.I.T.A. (Asian Kids In The Arts), which was originally designed to reduce the gang involvement of young adolescents, is doing really well. Megumi is approached by older adolescents every week who want to help out with the after-school program that so many young Asian students are getting involved in. It is fortunate for Megumi that so many people are volunteering to help out with the program, because so many young adolescents are signing up to participate.

Why is Megumi's initiative doing so well? And how can we all learn from it?

Megumi started her initiative with five other theatre majors at her university soon after a local boy was shot dead outside his parents' house in a gang related incident. The boy was only thirteen years old. Megumi used some of the publicity about the boy's death as a launching pad for her A.K.I.T.A. program.

Megumi and her partners took the program idea to the school board in the city where her university was located asking for approval to speak to children in the sixth through ninth grades. After getting approval, they asked their university if it would allow them to run the program in one of the theatre halls.

A.K.I.T.A. was given permission, and soon Megumi and her friends introduced the new program to children in schools throughout the city. There was such an outpouring of enthusiasm about the program that they went to university clubs to ask for help. Posters were made and distributed throughout the city. The program was mentioned at the city council meeting. Local cable did a feature story. Megumi and her partners involved anybody and everybody they could.

As a result of their hard work, effort, and good communication, Megumi's initiative had more volunteers than they knew what to do with. They were offered funding for the next year; hundreds of children signed up for the program (thereby solving daycare questions for many working mothers), and there were several plays that spring which brought culture and joy to the city.

Had they kept their initiative to themselves, it surely would have been far less successful.

Although their initiatives were different in nature, it is easy to see that publicity was a valuable tool for Megumi and her initiative, while remaining an untapped resource for Terry.

Step 5: Ask yourself: how can your organization best get the message out?

An initiative or organization has so many options when it comes to getting the message out to raise awareness. An organization may consider using publicity by press releases, arranging news and feature stories, approaching editorial boards, preparing guest columns and editorials, arranging a press conference, coordinating with national awareness weeks/months, conducting community forums on the topic, and in many other ways.

Often you may also want to advertise. You can do this by creating public service announcements on screen or in print, making posters and fliers, creating newsletters, and special promotions like bumper stickers, T-shirts, and postcards.

For more specific ways to get your message out, see Chapter 6: Promoting Interest in Community Issues, Sections 2 through 19.

As you can see there are many ways to get your message out, but just remember: You must use the method that best fits your target population.

Example:

If your program is trying to reach stay-at-home moms or dads, it may be useful to use television advertising that appear during daytime shows. If you are trying to reach working moms or dads, daytime television advertising would be a waste of your valuable resources. You would be much better off using radio advertising during the morning and evening commutes. If you are specifically trying to reach working people that commute by train, train advertising would probably be your best choice.

Step 6: Ask yourself how much money you have to work with

If your initiative or organization is large, popular or well-established, you may be working with a budget the size of Michael Jordan's salary. However, if your organization is just starting out you may be working with magic markers and poster board. And there's nothing wrong with that.

The point is that you must plan to use your budget as effectively and intelligently as possible. Do not be discouraged by having a low budget initially. Remember that word of mouth is free! Use it as much as possible.

Example 1:

Leteisha had just taken over as director of an adult literacy program. The program's communication budget was relatively high compared to many of the other social programs offered in the city.

Leteisha spent the majority of money allotted for communication on posters and billboards advertising the literacy program. However, she was surprised when there was a low turnout at the first classes. It didn't occur to her that printed material was probably not the best place for her program's money. The people she really wanted to reach couldn't read it!

Example 2:

Carlos is president of the Mexican-American Students Association of his university, which is located in a major urban area. Although they have a small but adequate budget allotted to their club by the university, there is no money available to promote Carlos' new ESL program.

Although many of the club members have volunteered to help teach ESL to people in the community, there is no money for promotion. Fortunately, Carlos had a powerful idea. He and other members of the Mexican-American Students Association went around to many Spanish-speaking neighborhood institutions and places of businesses in the community, both to promote the program and to ask others' for help in promoting it.

The program was highly successful. Most of the people learned of the program through word of mouth in their neighborhood.

So it is possible to raise awareness of your initiative or organization with little or no money, and it is also possible to not raise awareness of your program with a substantial amount of money.

In any case, it is important to use the resources you do have to maximum effect. And if you do need more, you can develop a separate plan to seek them out.

Step 7: Ask yourself what obstacles you may encounter, and how you will get around them

Anticipate obstacles that may occur. If you've lived on this planet for long, you must already know that things do not always go as planned. If they did, we would probably be so surprised we wouldn't know what to do. Don't worry about the obstacles, just prepare for them. Making a plan will help. Be ready.

Future sections in this chapter and elsewhere will help you to find techniques that will help make your plan a success.



We encourage the reproduction of this material but ask that you credit the Community Tool Box:  http://ctb.ku.edu



Resources

Homan, Mark. (1994). Promoting community change: Making it happen in the real world. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company.