Engaging Key Audiences in Community Issues

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• Engaging Key Audiences in Community Issues
• December 8, 2005

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Enrichments Old and New
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Where We Were

• Quarterly publication sent to all key audiences
• Mainly Foundation-specific stories/messages
• Feedback indicated the Foundation should more
  broadly share its expertise and knowledge of
  community issues

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Where We Wanted To Be

• Share the Foundations access to expertise
• Expand our viewpoint to include voices from
  different sectors, races, age groups and
  organizational levels
• Help our target audience learn about key issues
  facing our community
• Learn from our readers
• Support our nonprofit partners

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What We Did About It

• Share the knowledge and expand our viewpoint
• Assemble a topic-specific editorial board to
  brainstorm potential sources
• Vet sources to ensure a wide spectrum of
  perspectives
• Have the sources author their own articles

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What We Did About It

• Help our target audience learn about key issues
  facing our community
• Choose specific issues in order to share
  in-depth information
• Give a broad overview to bring the reader up to
  speed
• Offer several perspective-specific articles for
  deeper learning

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What We Did About It

• Learn from our readers
• Add an interactive component through a Letter to
  the Editor feature
• Readers can respond to let us know what we missed
  or support theperspectives presented

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What We Did About It

• Support our nonprofit partners
• Research nonprofits doing work on a given issue
• Include an article from at least one nonprofit
  per edition to showcase that organizations work
  and mission
• The nonprofits featured are not necessarily
  funded by the Foundation

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The Outcome and Response

• We know people are reading it!
• Readers are responding with their opinions and
  taking the time to tell us what they think
• Community partners are delighted to have
  attention focused on their issues and their work
• Staff is energized and is thinking about other
  community issues where the Foundation can provide
  leadership