PR Campaign: Habitat for Humanity

8/10/2019 PR Campaign: Habitat for Humanity

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Public Relations Campaign Proposal

Habitat For Humanity:IU Chapter

Maddy Weil, Jade Schwarting, Nicole Dent, Joan Ong, Sarah Griffin, & Katie

Allman


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Table of Contents

Executive Summary 3

Situation Analysis 4-7

Research Plan 8

Research Analysis 9-10

Campaign Plan 11-13

Timetable 14

Campaign Evaluation 15

Support Documents 16


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large number of projects. Also, requiring cash payment, good credit,and sweat equity from prospective homebuyers allows for onlyroughly 10% of applicants to be accepted. Despite this narrowrange, Habitat is involved in disaster relief efforts for peoplevulnerable to or affected by natural disasters. Habitat also offersvocational training for students going abroad, and has aNeighborhood Revitalization Initiative through local affiliates totend to the specific needs of different communities andneighborhoods. They accept donations of furniture, accessories, andbuilding materials and have their own awareness campaignBuiLDwhich raises awareness of global housing needs andsupports ending poverty.

With a full housing market recovery not expected until 2014, theorganization can greatly benefit from the nations increased needfor home building [Appendix F]. Lack of competition from similarhomebuilding organizations opens opportunities to tap into asparked interest in helping the housing crisis. Also, since Habitat isa Christian organization, there will always be a large, consistentfollowing for the organization to rely on [Appendix A].

Habitat for Humanity is yet to expand into various marketsincluding college students, young adults, established volunteergroups, and churches. Habitat has also previously taken advantageof marketing through social media outlets such as Facebook andTwitter grab the attention of college students and young adults.Having a space for donations available on their website as well asposting photos and videos contributed by volunteers also serves an

effort to establish visual presence on the Internet [Appendix A].

Another benefit to the organization is their work with the federalgovernment to support affordable and sustainable housing.Government grants and federal funding allow them to consistentlydevelop and seek out less expensive and more durable products.


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Although winter months complicate building efforts and thereforedecrease the number of building projects and volunteerparticipation opportunities, they do allow for increased donations,and fundraising efforts to be organized [Appendix A].

Locally, Habitat for Humanity competes with a similar organizationcalled Timmy Global Health for funds, donations, and volunteers.Timmy Global Health is essentially the Habitat for Humanity ofhealthcare; it focuses on involving students in expanding access tothe millions without health care across the world. Their volunteerbase has a larger student density than that of Habitats, so theystand as competition for local student support [Appendix H].

That said, even after volunteers are involved in either organization,outside obligations account for a lack of participation. Strongreligious affiliations have also caused roadblocks for funds andparticipation for Habitat; certain groups have pressured thegovernment to cancel grants and subsidies because they claim thelaws of separation of state and church are being violated [AppendixG].

Other aspects of Habitats processes have sometimes causeddifficulty for the organization: They are adamant about buildingfrom scratch, although remodeling is cheaper and more efficient.These inflexible, basic work models have been known to limit theirability to take on poorer areas that have fallen into disrepair, evenwhen better living conditions would greatly benefit the communityas a whole. Despite their current disaster relief efforts, Habitat has

been criticized for being unequipped to take on massive projectssuch as hurricanes, tsunamis, tornados, and other disasters thatleave millions of people without homes each year [Appendix B].

Aside from internal problems outside aspects such as increasingunemployment from recessions, increasing homelessness around


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the world, hyperinflation in developing countries, climateconditions being adverse for sustainable construction, anddecreasing donors due to global financial recessions are allthreatening to the organization. [Appendix G]. Overall, Habitat forHumanity has been successful in their organizations missionstatement to demonstrate Christian morals, focus on shelter,advocate for affordable housing, promote dignity and hope, andsupport sustainable and transformational development.


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Research Plan

In order to get the most out of our research, we believe it is

important to recruit respondents from a variety of grades, genders,and levels of familiarity with Habitat for Humanity. Our research

will focus on the IU student body by splitting them into two

different groups. We will create a poll directed at members of the

IU student body who are not involved with the IU chapter of

Habitat for Humanity. This poll will address Habitats

transparency on campus, students willingness to volunteer, and

the outlets that Habitat can use to increase their activity and

communication with the student body. We will get this poll in

circulation around the IU campus by using social media outlets like

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and OnCourse.

In addition, we will conduct one-on-one interviews with willing

members of the IU Habitat chapter to get as much informationabout their values and the way they project themselves on campus.

We will ask these members questions pertaining to their member

count, their goals for the academic year and the ways in which they

recruit new members from the IU student body. We will incorporate

our poll data and interview data that we collect to find more

efficient and effective ways for the IU Habitat for Humanitychapter to reach out to the IU student body and get more Hoosiers

involved.


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Research Analysis

In the course of our research, we both confirmed some of our initial

thoughts and discovered new possible ways to reach out to the

Indiana University Community.

Our primary public is students from a variety of grade levels,

genders, levels of volunteer experience, etc. We suspected that this

particular demographic may be in want of volunteer

experience/information. After polling, this was confirmed, with the

demographic overwhelmingly (79%) reporting volunteering less

than 6 hours per month; additionally, 78% of students reported

being either unfamiliar or fairly familiar with Habitat for

Humanity itself. Hence, our group decided that an awareness

campaignthat would teach students about the unique

opportunities available for them to volunteerwould be best. This

also meshes well with Habitat for Humanitys plan for the wintermonths. Since building is more difficult at this time of the year, the

organization generally tries to focus on raising awareness and

donations.

We will contact students about these opportunities primarily

through email and social media, because our research confirmed

that a majority of students preferred these methods of

communication to more traditional ones (47% of students wished to

be informed via email, 23% through social media).


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We also plan to focus on some lesser-known volunteering

opportunities available through the organization. Aside from

construction itself, which 31% of students said they wanted to

become involved with, the main interests of students were creative

volunteering (such as photography and contributing to social

media) at 21% and joining committees (such as Public Relations,

Family Selection, Special Events and Finance) at 17%. From this

information, our group concluded that students want a more

diverse selection of volunteering opportunities, so we plan onfocusing our awareness campaign on the more unique and unknown

aspects of Habitat for Humanity.


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Campaign Plan

The focus of our public relations campaign is the IU Bloomington

chapter of Habitat for Humanity. All of the work is focused here inMonroe County, and the campaign will reach out to IU students to

get them involved with the Monroe County chapter. There are

monthly meetings and various events where students can volunteer

their time and resources [Appendix C]. However through our

research weve discovered the success of this message to the student

body is very weak [Appendix D]. We found that 62% of students

surveyed had never volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, and

25% had not heard of the organization having an affiliate on

campus [Appendix E]. Therefore, we chose the IU student body as

our main public in order to get a higher amount of students to

become volunteers for the organization. These efforts will also raise

awareness rates on campus about the opportunities Habitat offers

beyond building.

One of the main issues we found through our research is that manystudents didnt realize that Habitat offered othervolunteeropportunities outside of building houses. The surveys showed that69% were not aware of the other options, and would prefer tovolunteer in ways other than construction. [Appendix E]

We would like to send a few related messages to our audience of IUBloomington students. The first is that its easy to startvolunteering with Habitat for Humanity. Theres no fee to join theclub, all that is needed is a commitment to volunteering ones timedoing whatever type of work is needed. The second message wewould like to send is that volunteering with Habitat is beyond just


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building houses. While building houses is a large part of whatHabitat for Humanity does, the organization needs volunteers forso much more. This includes creative work like website design,social media and photography, and also donation programs for foodand money. The Habitat for Humanity chapter on IU Bloomingtonscampus is not getting the word out about all of the other volunteeroptions to its audience. Many of the respondents to our surveyexpressed that they would be much more inclined to volunteer withHabitat if they were able to use their talents and donate their timein ways other than physical labor.

Through our research, we also discovered that most peoplepreferred the idea of an awareness event in order to become moreinformed about Habitat for Humanity. [Appendix E] Therefore wedecided to tailor such an event to the student body in order toincrease interest and knowledge about the organization. Wed liketo communicate these messages to our audience with one largeawareness event called Beyond Building Homes. This would be afree awareness fair in the Indiana Memorial Union, with only anemail sign-up requested for entry. Inside the fair there would bemultiple stations set up, one station per volunteer opportunity thatthe organization offers for students. This would allow for a visualrepresentation of the different ways one can volunteer for Habitat.Furthermore, each station would include an email sign-up for moreinformation for that particular opportunity. Each student whosigned up would also get placed in a raffle for a gift card to a localrestaurant as an incentive to learn more about the organization andhopefully increase volunteer numbers.

We are focusing on email sign-ups because according to our data,47% of students surveyed preferred to be contacted via email versusother outlets like social media, posters, signs and word of mouth.Therefore, we need to focus on increasing our email list andcreating a Listserv to keep our potential volunteers updated on


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Habitats upcoming volunteer opportunities. [Appendix E]

We are going to advertise for this event through many differentchannels. First, through our secondary research, we discovered thatHabitat for Humanity at IU has a social media presence, but it isfairly unknown to the campus community. Therefore, we would liketo spread the word about the Facebook for Habitat page as a meansof reaching out to our publics and getting them more involved.Twenty-three percent of our respondents said that they would liketo hear about IUs Habitat chapter from social media, therefore wewould like to reach out to that 23% and rely on the snowball effectto generate an interest on Facebook and Twitter.

Furthermore, we would chalk and use signs around campus, whichare not extremely effective, but 10% of students surveyed said theywould like to be informed in that way. [Appendix E] With such lowcost, it would be worth it to invest the time. Finally, we would reachout via email to other organizations on campus including the Greekcommunity, Indiana University Student Foundation, IndianaUniversity Student Association, Indiana University DanceMarathon and other large student-run organizations. Byforwarding volunteer opportunities via email, Habitats messagecan reach a large number of students who will spread the word andincrease the chances of getting more student volunteers involvedwith Habitat for Humanity in Monroe County.


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Timetable


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Campaign Evaluation

Our main objective for our Habitat for Humanity campaign is to

spread the message that there are opportunities with Habitatbeyond construction. Additionally, we would like to increase thenumber of volunteers, both in construction and elsewhere. Ourmain medium through which we will promote the organization andthe Beyond Building Homes event is social media. We will measurethe success of the Facebook page and Twitter profile based on thenumber of likes, shares,follows, retweets, and favorites.These numbers will indicate how well the message is being received

by the public, as well as what types of information they find mostuseful. At the Beyond Building Homes event, since we will offer thechance to sign up to receive information via email from each chosenvolunteer opportunity through Habitat, we will compare thenumber of students on the email list with the number of studentswho volunteer. We also plan to offer an optional exit survey thatasks students how they heard about the Beyond Building Homesevent, so we can use that information to improve communication for

future events.

Through both social media and the event, the most importantindicator of success is the number of new volunteers for IUsHabitat Chapter. We plan to review the Facebook page and Twitterprofile immediately after Beyond Building Homes, after a period ofsix months, as well as a year after the event, to see how muchinteraction occurs between the IU student body and IU Habitats

social media. Additionally, we will compare the number of currentmembers with the number of new members after a period of onemonth, six months, and one year, to see the results of our campaignefforts. If the Beyond Building Homes event and social media usagegoes as planned, we hope to double the number of new volunteersafter one year.


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Support Documents


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APPENDIX A


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APPENDIX C


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APPENDIX E


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APPENDIX F


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APPENDIX H