This week has been a myriad of starting and finishing different aspects of my project. Tomorrow, I close the book on my marketing plan. I’ve dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s and even am running it through Canva to make sure the final draft looks nice. Today I closed the book on the engagement plan portion of the project. For the last few weeks, I’ve been meeting with different staff that work with different stakeholders involved with JFS – donors, volunteers, program partners, and their new business services program. It was then my job to create a sort of calendar, or multi-point plan, of different actions JFS staff should take to make sure these stakeholders get a good introduction to the organization. The better the welcome, the more likely they are to stay. I took a marketing class in high school and we learned that its 7x cheaper to try and retain your customers than get new ones. I’m sure nonprofit organizations play by similar rules. These engagement plans should help with that.

Today also marked the beginning of the last part of my project. Throughout the month of August, I’ll be helping JFS conduct a social media “thank you” campaign to spotlight all the different ways people contribute to the organization. I met with the Marketing and Communications Director, the Resource Development Director, and the Special Projects Manager. I do better when I have clear expectations and deadlines, so I called the meeting in order to discuss what we wanted the campaign to look like and put together next steps. I’m leading the campaign, which is exciting, and now after this meeting I’m ready to get the ball rolling. August 1, we hit the ground running.

My favorite part about JFS is how the answer is almost alway “yes.” I’ve been able to take on passion projects on top of my regularly assigned work. The Google Ad Grants continue to be in development, and I’m working on putting together two, maybe three, campaigns to support different JFS services’ outreach efforts. If all goes well, I’ll be designing one for the Business Services Membership Program, the Life and Legacy program, as well as one for JFS’ workshops and trainings for job seekers.

Tomorrow I’m meeting with the coordinator of the Business Service Membership Program and we’re going to talk about Google Ad Grants with the goal of getting a campaign off the ground as soon as possible. We’re also going to talk about me getting to try my hand at working with MailChimp. This is another software I want to gain experience working with, and when I asked about it, the answer was “yes.”

I may also get to continue creating marketing materials. For the Business Services program, I helped put together an onboarding/welcoming toolkit in Canva. This was shared with two other staffers who run job seeker workshops and trainings. They indicated they’d like me to make something for them, too, which I’d love to be able to do. All in all, when I’m not working on my project, it’s a bit like choose your own adventure – I’m loving every step of the way.