D&Co. helps youth arts program pivot, stay on track during COVID-19 health crisis
A nearly 120-year-old nonprofit organization offering supplemental visual and performing arts education for urban youth retained Dorsey & Company to guide marketing activities to maximize program awareness and effectiveness during the COVID-19 health crisis.
Our recommendations included developing messaging around “safety” and “quality” that would reassure parents, students, and funders that the same arts programming they relied upon and supported would continue providing much-needed arts enrichment programming – adjusted for health and safety.
Our recommendations also helped the organization seamlessly pivot program offerings and outreach to clients when shutdowns greatly impacted student participation. For example, when transportation that previously brought students from participating schools was suspended, we helped the client develop messaging and tactics to engage more families who lived within walking or close distance from the facility.
Our recommendations were accepted and implemented, resulting in an ongoing retainer to develop a strategy and implementation methods to consolidate and strengthen marketing and fundraising messaging to the client’s target audiences.
D&Co. counsel helps fraternal organization party with a purpose, raise awareness and sponsorship for good cause
Dorsey & Company was challenged with finding an economical way to extend participation at a fraternal organization’s annual gathering beyond the immediate event and to also support a fundraiser concert scheduled during the gathering. Key to extended participation was identifying and developing messaging for potential concert sponsors. To reach a much broader audience, one that sponsors would see as valuable, we developed the strategy and concept for a fund-raising sweepstakes, its mechanics and operation, graphics, and sponsorship communication. In addition, we also handled national publicity, targeting media outlets appropriate for this subject and audience.
Efficient, sustainable and exclusive: The path to winning over ideal targets to your “side”
An economic development organization for a large US city engaged Dorsey & Company to develop concepts for a strategic, targeted program designed to attract individuals and corporations to the city. The effort had to be efficient and one that could reach key influencers and resist the counter moves of competing locales and the inevitable bit of negative news the target city might generate.
D&Co. determined that a target group existed that could be tapped successfully for its ability to provide information and connections, as well as enhance support of local businesses. We determined that the common denominator to tap among all of the identified targets was the potential to either do business in the city or purchase locally-made goods and services from ‘makers’ and service providers in the city. With that information, D&Co. developed a communication strategy to target and tap this group, gaining leverage from their common traits to provide long-term value to the city.
Our recommendations were accompanied by guidance for implementation, evaluation, and modification for continuous improvement as appropriate.
Right Message, Right Target, Right Time
Dorsey & Company developed a system for the collection and dissemination of information and feature story concepts to advance the objectives of a major hospital system. Crucial to this work was the identification of internal and external targets for this effort around each hospital facility in a targeted geographic area to allow effective two-way communication between the hospital and the various audiences in its growing service footprint.
Competitive Strategy Proves Vital in Community Development Effort Result: The Heights Community Development Alliance is born
Dorsey & Company President Julius Dorsey introduced a concept of a cooperative to promote an identified business district in the city of Cleveland Heights, an inner-ring Cleveland Suburb. As a volunteer in the civic initiative he envisioned, he organized and led meetings with residents, business owners, elected officials and institutional directors from the local community. After subsequent discussions with community development and city government leaders, the concept evolved to focus on economic development and civic engagement in the business district, with a view to take what worked in the target commercial district city-wide.
With this new focus and less than one year after the concept was introduced, the effort was called Heights Community Development Alliance (HCDA) and became a formal program of a long-standing and respected nonprofit community and economic development organization. The group formed to address three core areas of concentration:
– Cross promoting events
– Marketing the city to outsiders and ourselves
– Economic development (addressing commercial vacancies)
Other HCDA initiatives include sponsoring a commercial vacancy study, developing an employee cross-promotion program and creating business pop-up and new business competitions to occupy vacant retail space in the target business district.