A First Person Account of How Communications Can Increase a Budget and Volunteerism

Working as a Comm Specialist for American Association's Order of Malta, New York

This case study is written entirely by a human mind. No LLMs were used in its creation.

PROBLEM:

The American Association's Prison Ministry Committee needed more volunteers and more funding to support its existing programs. It also needed more cohesion and teamwork from committee leadership itself.

In short, the PMC's visibility within its over 2,200 member base was practically non existent. Despite heroic efforts by long standing members in its lay person prison ministry (the American Association's Order of Malta had 22 programs in federal prisons and jails in over sixteen states), very little was known about these programs by the membership at large and more importantly, the need for the lay prison ministry programs was undeniably growing.

It was necessary to not only define and describe how the prison ministry's four distinct programs were helping the incarcerated in these sixteen U.S. member states but to start creating more standard operating procedures for training members of the American Association interested in engaging in prison ministry and to attract new ones.

 

 

SOLUTION:

Hire a Communications Specialist with experience and expertise in writing for print (earned) and online media (unearned).*

A Communications Strategy was developed with PMC Committee Co-Chairs to assist in the goals of increasing visibility, attracting more funding and volunteers.

The tactics included the following:

• Best Practices for organization's website (click here) and to compile into a Training Manual (included profiles of committee members)
• Case Studies for In-Person (Live) Conferences to establish Thought Leadership
• Committee Member Email Newsletter (Internal Communications) to facilitate engagement and activism
• Publish content/stories in vertically integrated organizations' print media (click here)
• Charters/Governance to provide more structure, accountability and buy-in of committee members and volunteers (click here)
• Long Form Stories/Profile Pieces for Non Profit Quarterly Print Publication to attract more volunteers throughout organization
• Non Profit Business and Strategic Plan including Financial Statements and proposed budget
• Annual Report/Impact Data to capture existing programs' efficacy and reach

For actual work product described above and/or letter of recommendation, please email me at writer@alexandralehmann.com. Or visit my blog.

OUTCOME:

After only one year, the PMC increased its budget by over 230%. Only 1/3 of the communications could actually be measured.

Increased participation by members (volunteerism) happened more slowly.

Unfortunately committee cohesion failed.

Internal conflict between co-chairs caused committee collapse. New volunteer members quickly replaced those long time members who resigned as a result of internal conflicts.

(The quick committee volunteer member replacements can be contributed to the one year communications strategy).

 

 

 

 

* Earned media once included long form story writing and/or profile and feature stories which used to require primary and secondary research, fact checking, interviews, permissions and editing.

Standard practice involved two or three revisions with an editor and publisher.

With the ever proliferation of 'content' on the Internet and social media (and now AI generated content), "stories" today are self published or AI published visual images and videos.

JPG/.mov file headlines and captions are often considered the most read part of a 'story' that must not consist of more than 150 words.

This doesn't mean however that compelling and relevant stories are only visual - a good story (movie, film, video clip) contains all of the traditional elements of great storytelling.

Thirty second videos still need a cogent message and a storyboard for each frame. Depending on whether a client wishes entertainment, education, advertising or marketing - good storytelling will win every single time. See David Ogilvy's principles.

Google Analytics can help. GA4 measures video milestones - what percentage of a video is watched?

I am (also) a communications specialist with knowledge of data analytics. Metrics (key performance indicators) measuring the efficacy of content are essential. What 'call to action' or headline received a conversion? (A click through?) What kind of anchor text on a link compels an online visitor to keep 'clicking'? And so on.

Google Analytics AI can answer any question about the persuasiveness, relevance and compelling nature of digital content. GA does not identify AI generated content - but it does 'rank' content with metrics designed to reward human effort, originality, accuracy, talent and skill.