Executive Summary

The Hope Line, a local Non Governmental Organization (NGO) is planning for a run to finance for heart treatment of children in our neighborhood. The target of the run is to raise $10 million and help many children livelonger. The major objective is to ensure that the needy children with heart conditions get the help they need to have a better life. The success of this noble course depends on public awareness. There has to be a communication strategy creating awareness about the heart condition and then raising money.

The major target audience is the middle-income and high-income earners who have something to spare for the needy kids. In the neighborhood, most of the people are middle-income earners and this makes it appropriate to target the group. Messages will be developed to fit the target audience and the communication channel. Both the traditional communication vehicles such as mass media and the modern vehicles such as social media will be used to create awareness. Specifically, the older generation will be targeted through the local newspapers and the local radio and TV stations. The younger and vibrant generation will be reached through the social media sites specifically Facebook and twitter.

Given that he communication channels are different, different message formats will be developed to fit the specific channels. I addition, the messages will be communicated regularly to reach as many people as possible. Success will be measured by the amount of money raised and the number of people making inquiries about the run.

Introduction

A local NGO in my home area known as The Hope Line is planning for a run to finance for heart treatment of children in our neighborhood. The target of the run is to raise $10 million and help many children livelonger. The major objective is to ensure that the needy children who have heart conditions can have a chance to live healthy like other kids. The success of this project however depends on the public participation. As an organization, the plan is to have participation tickets to be sold at strategic locations in the neighborhood. The organization will also be approaching businesses and corporations in the neighborhood to support the course.

The organization needs to reach as many people as possible to inform them of the course. This will require strategic communication. First, the organization has to decide what the message to the public is. The message must be appealing the target audience (Barrett, 2014). A larger population in the area is middle-income earners and thus they are the major target audience.

However, the high-income earners, big business, and corporations are also being targeted. These people can afford to spare some of their income to support the noble course. The medium of communication will depend on the target audience. For the young people, using the social media would be more effective. For the older generation, using mass media would be more effective. With this argument, the organization can combine the two Medias and reach as many people as possible.

Objective

The success of this noble course depends on public awareness. There has to be a communication strategy creating awareness about the heart condition and then raising money. It will be hard for the public to participate if they have no idea about what the money raised is helping with. In line with this, the first objective is to make the public aware of the heart condition and its effects on the lives of those suffering. With the public aware, it will then be easy to communicate about the run. From other similar projects that the organization has undertaken in the past, it has been clear that the public is always ready to support when they have an aide what they are supporting. In addition, the organization cannot just ask people to support as course they know nothing about.

Target Audience

This project does not target all the people in the neighborhood. The major target audience is the middle-income earners who have something to spare for the needy kids. The low-income earners are the ones the organization is trying to help meaning they are still stakeholders in this project. The high-income earners especially big businesses and corporations are also being targeted not to participate in the race but to sponsor the noble course or even sponsor their employees in the run.

In the neighborhood, most of the people are middle-income earners and this makes it appropriate to target the group. However, significant groups of people are low-income earners and others are depending on social programs for survival. A significant number of children in this group are suffering from the heart conditions and this is the main reason the program is being rolled. This group will be used in the awareness process for the public to be able to see firsthand what they are supporting. However, they are not being targeted for the run.

There are those high-income earners who are running business in the area and others are employed in big organizations. Given that such people might not have the time for the run or might be busy with their businesses, the organization is targeting to request them to be sponsors. This group either can sponsor through direct contribution or can also sponsor other people to participate in the run. However, the organization is targeting this group for direct contributions.

Communication message

There are different messages to be communicated in this project. First, there is need to create awareness about the prevailing heart condition. As discussed earlier, the public need to know what they are supporting. The message here will be explaining what different types of heart conditions that exist. However, the message will concentrate more on the treatment phases involved and the machinery involved in the process. This will be aimed at notifying the public about the nature of treatment and the resources involved. In addition, the message will also include specific cases of conditions the children in the neighborhood are suffering. This will notify the public about the specific cases the organization is looking to intervene.

The other message will be making the public aware of the run meant to raise money to be used in the intervention programs. This message will focus on notifying the public on the ticket charges and the venue of the run. However, the message has to include information where the tickets are available and the mode of payments. The message will also invite those who have no time to get involved in the run to contribute directly towards the noble course.

Both of the above messages will run as one message. There will a compelling opening sentence followed by a short explanation about the heart conditions. Along the end, there will be information about the run including the availability of the tickets and the venue of the run as well as the date. The message will be as short as possible to minimize of the cost of awareness creation and to make it compelling.

For the corporations and big businesses, there will be need to communicate directly through a well-drafted email or letter. In addition, officials from the organization will also be visiting their premises to explain more about the run and its objectives.

Communication Channels/Vehicles

There are different communication channels to be used. These include the traditional and modern channels. Considering there are different age groups of people targeted, different channels are significant.

The older generation spends an evening watching TV or reading a newspaper or magazine after a hard day work in the office. Remember the target group is the middle-income earners. To reach this generation, local newspapers and magazine will have a whole page running the advert on the program of the organization. In addition, there will be voice adverts on the two most vocal radio stations in the neighborhood.

However, for the sake of those who are far and would wish to support the program there will be another advert on an international newspaper. Though the program is targeting the neighborhood, those in other neighborhood who would wish to support the program are also invited. For the younger generation, social media is the perfect vehicle to spread the awareness (Tsimonis & Dimitriadis, 2014). The major social media vehicles will be twitter and Face book.

The organization already has a page on Facebook, which is dedicated to awareness about different things. Information will be updated on regular basis on the page by a person assigned to that role. To reach as many people as possible, the Facebook friends will be encouraged to share the updates in their timelines. Through this, the message will reach many Facebook users even in other neighborhoods. Other organizational pages will be friend on Facebook and these organizations will be requested to share the message on their timelines.

Another major social media vehicle is the twitter. A specific person will be assigned to manage a twitter page and to run hash tags on regular basis. However, efforts will be made to ensure that the updates become a trending hash tags to get many views. Similar to Facebook, twitter users will be encouraged to retweet and share the updates and adverts to reach many people. In addition, influential people as local politicians and other leaders will be followed on twitter as well as organizations. Videos of the children who are targeted for the program will also be shared on twitter and Facebook.

Given that the organization already has an office with internet installed, updating people on social media requires no more resources. The employees of the organization are more than capable of handling the social media updates. However, running adverts on local newspapers and international newspapers is more expensive. Money has to be involved in running these adverts. However, there are sponsors within the organization ready to sponsor the adverts. In addition, the organization will also be requesting the local newspapers to sponsor the adverts as part of participating in the course.

Strategy Implementation

There are different communication channels to be used as discussed above. This calls for several message formats. An advert on a newspaper will not fit in the social media. Thus, several message formats will be generated to fit the different vehicles. Adverts on the newspapers will run after every two weeks. However, if the newspapers owners agree to sponsor, the number of days can be increased to once in a week. The first month will concentrate solely on awareness creation by which time the tickets will be ready for selling.

From the second month, the number of tickets sold will be included in the message. This is to inform those without a ticket that others have a ticket and encourage them to buy a ticket. Awareness will however run all through the time. One month before the event, messages will concentrate more on the number of tickets available and the program for the day.

Given that the social media requires frequent updates, volunteers will be responsible for managing the social media pages. Updates will be very frequent and any questions will be answered as they come. The social media pages will be dedicated to creating awareness and providing further information.

Tickets will start selling in the first month of the awareness program. The tickets will be printed before well before the awareness starts as part of preparations. However, more tickets will be printed as demand dictates.

Evaluation

Success will be measured by the amount of money raised. The major target of the communication strategy is to create awareness and raise money for the organization. Thus, the amount raised will be used to measure success. However, the number of people making inquiries about the run will also be used to measure the success of awareness. People making inquiries means they are already aware of the program.

Evaluation will be done on regular basis to ensure that the program is running as expected. With every evaluation done, changes will be made as needed. This will ensure that the success of the program is determined are early stages and necessary actions taken. The public will also be made aware of the progress made on regular basis mainly through the social and mass media.

Conclusion

For the success of this noble course, the public needs to participate widely. They are the only hope. The organization is targeting the public and hoping that people will find it in their hearts to help those in need. However, it is upon the organization to make the necessary information available to the public. This will only be done if there is a strategic communication program, which will ensure that the information gets out strategically (Smith, 2012).

Given that the target audience is the middle and high-income earners, it is certain that these people are in different age groups. This will call for the use of both the traditional and modern vehicles of communication. In addition, the message in both vehicles must be compelling to the target audience. In addition, evaluation needs to be done regularly to identify if the objectives are in line with what is happening on the ground.

References

Barrett, D. (2014). Leadership communication (4^th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Education

Smith, R. D. (2012). Strategic planning for public relations. Routledge.

Tsimonis, G., & Dimitriadis, S. (2014). Brand strategies in social media. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 32(3), 328-344.

 
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