COMMUNICATIONS PLAN FOR CPS GIVING TREE
Goal: Bring more attention to University United Methodist Church’s partnership with Child Protective Services through internal communications and a social media campaign in efforts to increase the support of the annual giving campaign by covering 10% more gifts from the previous year.
Audience: Church members between 25-65.
Key Message: Support foster families by providing more than 500 children with gifts during the holiday season by making a contribution to the annual CPS Giving Tree Campaign.
Tactical Plan / Channels:
Written Content – Website Event & Weekly Email
Internal Communications – Invitation to church members during services, Church Bulletin, Posters & Slides throughout building & App Push Notification
Social Media Campaign
Timeline | Nov. 10 - Dec. 7, 2023
November 1-7
Gathered information and started editing event details for the event landing page on the website.
Used the already-established branding for this annual event to edit slides and posters for internal messaging.
Finalized written copy for email and in-church service invitations.
Brainstormed social media push.
Week of November 7
Published the event on the website on November 8 – kept published through December 7.
Communicated with leadership to share events in services and other small group settings.
Week of November 13
Invitation during church services.
Added the event in church bulletin for Sunday mornings.
Added to weekly email as the first item in the Events list.
Week of November 20
Invitation during church services
Added the event in church bulletin for Sunday mornings.
Rolled out social media campaign on Monday, Nov. 21.
Keep in weekly email as the first item in the Events list.
Week of November 27
Checked with the Outreach Department to get updates on numbers.
Solidified the social media campaign.
Published posts that shared progress of gift fulfillment on Tuesday, Nov. 29 and Friday, Dec. 2.
Shared a story to show how this campaign impacts the lives of those in CPS services.
Published push notifications that linked directly to the event on the website.
Kept in weekly email as the first item in the Events list updating with numbers.
Week of December 4
Social media posts – giving final update on numbers.
Thanked those who contributed in church email and internal signage.
DELIVERABLES THAT WERE CREATED FOR CAMPAIGN
Event Landing Page:
The CPS Giving Tree is a CPS led, church-supported event:
The Giving Tree event has a two-fold purpose, to help foster children during the holidays and to raise awareness for the need for foster-to-adopt families. Currently, there are about 800 children in the Bexar County Adoption Prep Program waiting to be adopted. Many of the children in Foster Care are residing at relatives' homes, who themselves are struggling financially. This year, we will also be including one CPS unit of older children, who are close to aging out of foster. This project aims to bring a little extra sparkle to foster children during the season of giving. The Adoption Preparation Program works with all age ranges of children to recruit and find them forever families. The Bexar County Adoption Prep program aims to work with University to lead by example in our community. We will continue to work together to make the holiday wishes of our children in foster care a reality.
If you are able, please select a child to gift by clicking on our SignUpGenius link below. If you or your Sunday School class or group, would like to provide a financial contribution for CPS Giving Tree, in lieu of shopping for presents or volunteering, you can write a check to University & in the memo, write CPS Giving Tree-22095.
On the SignUpGenius, we have 9 tabs at the top of the page. The first 8 tabs on the sign-up are lists of gift tags due on either Nov. 20th or Nov. 27th. The last tab is to sign up to wrap presents. Simply, click on each tab, to get to a new list or click on the '>' symbol, to get to another tab (aka list).
If you need more time to drop off your presents or cannot help with the gift tag anymore, please contact Taylor or Pauline, ASAP.
If you select a tag, and it is past the due date of Nov. 27th, please return your presents no later than Dec. 6th, to ensure we have time to shop for children's tags that were not selected. We will also have members of our Outreach team in the North Campus Lobby and South Campus Narthex on Sunday mornings, to help anyone who might need assistance selecting a tag online.
If you have any questions about choosing a gift tag, please contact Taylor or Pauline at 210.696.1033 or by email TMooney@UniversitySATX.Org or PRamirez@UniversitySATX.Org.
POST-PROJECT ASSESSMENT
Summary:
Between November 1 – December 7, 2022, University United Methodist Church completed its annual fundraising initiative in partnership with Child Protective Services to provide over 500 kids with Christmas gifts. In 2021, they had received donations to cover 80% of the children. In 2022, their goal was to increase the donations by 10% while bringing more attention to this ongoing partnership. The 10% goal was surpassed as we were able to fulfill 95% of the gifts. This was one of the most successful CPS Giving Tree Campaigns that we have had throughout the partnership with CPS.
I worked closely with the Outreach department to understand all the details of this campaign. It helped me to understand the demographics of the people we were reaching, how many kids we were supporting, and the progress of the project. Communication with this team was vital in getting the percentages of the remaining kids whose gifts needed to be covered. With these percentages, we were able to understand better which tactics were working best.
Outcomes of Tactics:
Written Content:
The written content was a vital part of the campaign. It provided information that was needed to leverage the understanding of why the church was doing this project.
Internal Communications:
Having internal signage helped to bring attention to the ongoing partnership and direct those wishing to donate to the platform that was needed to purchase a gift or support with a cash donation. The internal communication that proved to be the most successful was the App Push Notification. The app is strategically designed for church members, and by engaging with the push notification they were directed directly towards the Event Landing Page. We had two push notifications which led to a rise in the number of gifts that were being fulfilled.
Social Media Campaign:
The social media campaign proved to be the most successful tactic of this communications campaign. I used Facebook and Instagram and each post averaged about 600 people with the highest reaches being around 840 people. The engagement for these posts averages around 4 percent. In addition, the posts’ shares ranged between 4-14, which helped bring more awareness to the initiative within our community. Overall, the gifts purchased and the cash donations increased with this successful Social Media Campaign.
Recommendations:
Consider having the communications team participate in initial meetings with CPS so that they can identify compelling stories to tell during the campaign. Have scheduled meetings with the Outreach team to better understand what tactics are gaining more engagement. Be more strategic about having service invitations, app push notification and the social media campaign coincide with each other.