A diagram from the communications strategy I presented to our executive team, demonstrating the importance of investing in communications early on.
Challenge
Soon after I joined the Fund for Public Health, I realized that the organization’s website wasn’t working well for its needs. The site was not mobile-responsive, and any changes we wanted to make to content had to go through a specialized consultant or web designer. Staff members, even those with website management training, had trouble regularly updating the site.
Though the Fund had gone through a rebranding exercise a few years prior, there was fair amount of confusion, both internal and external, about the Fund’s mission, vision, and goals. In addition, the Fund had recently engaged a consulting agency to help them expand their fundraising capacity to include outreach to individuals and major donors. With the current site, it would be difficult to execute on this new external-facing vision for the organization.
Opportunity
It was clear that the Fund needed to reevaluate its web and communications strategy. I developed a communications strategic plan, drawing on my expertise in content marketing and using insights from our consultant exercise. We had learned that while many of our stakeholders had a positive impression of the Fund, there was still a good deal of confusion in how to discuss and represent our work. Our branding was inconsistent across platforms, and design elements across the website felt disjointed with the messaging we were developing.
I advocated for a reevaluation and refinement of our brand identity, the creation of guidelines for written and online communications, and the implementation of a new website featuring a blog and additional areas for content marketing, that would allow us to raise awareness of our work and write proudly about our accomplishments. The site would also be properly plugged in to display analytics, so we could report on performance and track what types of content performed best. As an organization, we would also commit ourselves to reporting regularly on the impact of our work on the health and wellbeing of New Yorkers.
Solution
I began to lead the process of identifying and selecting Wired Impact, a vendor specializing in working with nonprofits, to help us build our site. My experience as a web developer and copyeditor helped move the process along swiftly. My team and I did a full reevaluation and rewrite of our existing content, using the opportunity to highlight the Fund’s impressive history while also ensuring that our most popular content was still front and center. We selected new website images and streamlined our colors to give the website a clean and professional look, and built up our blog with content highlighting our successful projects. By sticking to an aggressive timeline (aligned with the launch of a new payment processing system and database, the selections of which I also led) we were able to launch the website in February 2020, right before COVID-19 arrived in New York City.
Rising to the Challenge of COVID
As the nonprofit partner to the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the Fund sprung into action as COVID-19 began to wreak havoc on the city. Our website was able to weather a nearly 2000% increase in traffic, as interest in public health and contact tracing jobs skyrocketed. Our site gave us the flexibility to develop responsive content that served our audience during the worst days of the pandemic, including an FAQ page that distilled information from the CDC and Health Department, a resource guide for New Yorkers, and regular news roundups featured on our blog. I began to write a bi-weekly newsletter with updates for our audience, which has become a powerful way for us to attract new donors and potential donors. We also launched a webinar series, titled Public Health Talks, which featured experts from the Health Department discussing public health and COVID-related issues in the city. These events quickly grew to attract hundreds of attendees each month.
More importantly, our site has since become an invaluable tool in our work to raise money to support COVID-related initiatives, keep existing programs afloat during this fiscal crisis, and continue to raise awareness about the incredible work being done by the Health Department to keep New Yorkers safe and healthy.
