Habitat For Humanity: Final PR Campaign Book
Habitat For Humanity: Final PR Campaign Book
Habitat For Humanity: Final PR Campaign Book
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Comm 473 (Fall 2012)
JD Enterprises Team
Mary Smurkowski Rebecca Szwak Julianne Legath Juliana Lustig Kelsey Flatau Chelsea Vielhauer
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY2 INTRODUCTION3 MEET THE TEAM.5 RESEARCH PHASE...7 o BACKGROUND..8 o COMMUNICATION AUDIT SUMMARY8 o CURRENT SITUATION (ISSUE ANALYSIS)..8 o PRELIMINARY IDENTIFICATION OF TARGET PUBLICS10 o PRIMARY RESEARCH..10 PLANNING PHASE..23 o KEY PUBLIC..24 o PLAN.24 o GOALS, OBJECTIVES, STRATEGIES & TACTICS..25 o THEMES/MESSAGES..28 IMPLEMENTATION PHASE..30 o TIMETABLE..31 o RESOURCES..32 EVALUATION & STEWARDSHIP PHASE..33 o EVALUATION..34 o STEWARDSHIP PLAN.37 o CONCLUSION & SUMMARY.38 APPENDICES.40 o APPENDIX A.41 o APPENDIX B.47 o APPENDIX C.57 o APPENDIX D.67 o APPENDIX E.74 GROUP CERTIFICATION.77
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JD Enterprises, the 2012 Pennsylvania State University Public Relations Campaign team, helped Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County reach out to Penn State students in fresh new ways to establish a lasting impression. JD Enterprises, comprised of six senior Public Relations students, dedicated countless amounts of time to research and idea development in order to inform Penn State students about Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County and the upcoming Home Run Derby.
Executive Summary
JD Enterprises conducted primary research to better understand what Penn State students already knew about Habitat, wanted to know about Habitat, and what could make the Home Run successful. We also aimed to find out what attracts students to promotional events, including prizes and giveaways. Overall, we found out many important things that helped us in the planning of our promotional event. A large majority of the students who were interested in participating in the Home Run Derby were involved in on-campus activities and/or Greek life at Penn State. However, less than a third of those interested in the Derby knew how to get involved with Habitat. Most students wanted to learn the appropriate steps to volunteering. We learned that in order to entice the Greek community it may be important to emphasize community service hours. In terms of the promotional event that we would be planning, we learned that it would be best to hold this event in the HUB on a busy weekday, and have plenty of prizes and freebies to attract students. A promotional event in the HUB was planned based on the research findings of JD Enterprises. The main goal of this event was to inform Penn State students about what Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County does for the community, as well as introduce the Home Run Derby and begin getting students interested in the event. Prior to the HUB event, JD Enterprises sent out a press release and fact sheet to various media outlets. On the day of the promotional event our group had a five-minute slot on the B94.5 Morning Zoo radio show, which served to promote the event and inform listeners about Habitat.
The promotional event that was held in the HUB was an exciting and fun event for all that attended. Informational baseball cards, complete with Habitat stats, were given out to students. There was free food in the form of baseball cupcakes and candy, as well as countless prizes and giveaways. The grand prize that was given away was a free 20-person suite at a 2013 State College Spikes game. The event served as a very successful way to inform students about Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County.
The promotional efforts we completed throughout our campaign proved overall to be a major success. At our event, we were able to pass out 384 informational baseball cards containing basic Habitat for Humanity facts, which surpassed our intended goal of 200. We
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were also able to create a larger listserv for Habitat for Humanity to use when reaching out to interested students with information about the upcoming derby than intended. Along with both of those measurable goals met, we were able to gain a better understand from some students that attended our event through informal conversations when discussing Habitat for Humanitys goals, as well as promoting the upcoming derby. To create and maintain a positive relationship with those students interested in Habitat for Humanity as well as the Home Run Derby currently planned for the spring semester, we strongly suggest that the organization makes initial contact with the individuals on the listserv immediately. We also suggest that the organization continues to use our sample media posts for both Facebook and Twitter in order to build a better relationship with the audience they are trying to reach.
Overall, we feel that the dedication and time that JD Enterprises, as well as Habitat for Humanity, has put forth throughout the campaign has paid off. We are extremely hopeful that the results and information that we have comprised for this campaign booklet will truly be helpful for Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County as they take the next step forward with their planning process for the Home Run Derby, and we wish them the best of luck.
As of September 2012, JD Enterprises has been chosen to conduct the public relations efforts for Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County. We were asked to devise a campaign plan geared toward promoting their upcoming inaugural Home Run Derby that will be held during a future semester and promoting the organization in general. This publication is a step-by-step explanation of all the efforts that were made by JD Enterprises.
Introduction
Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County is one of 1500 independent affiliates of Habitat for Humanity International and is governed by its own local Board of Directors. Robert Olsen, Jon Grindall and Dave Miller originally formed habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County on October 27, 1983. The organization initially incorporated Centre, Clearfield, and Clinton Counties. Since then Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County has concentrated its efforts in Centre and Clinton Counties while Clearfield County has formed its own affiliate. The nonprofit housing organization builds simple and affordable homes for those who lack shelter. The homes are supported financially by donations of individuals, corporations, faith groups and others. Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County is located at 1155 Zion Road, in Bellefonte, Pa. Our contacts from Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County are Missy Schoonover and Will West. Missy is the Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County
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Interim Director and Will volunteers with the organization serving as an Executive Board Member.
This publication will detail the journey of JD Enterprises as it worked through the issue of informing students of what Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County does for the community. Another one of our main missions through our public relations efforts was to introduce the idea of a Home Run Derby. The Home Run Derby is something that Habitat wishes to plan as a way to raise funds for the organization. Our contacts believe that this is a fresh new idea that could potentially draw in a lot of Penn State students, a target group that has been difficult for the organization to reach in the past. Since this event is being planned for the future, our job was to research what will make the derby most successful in terms of attracting Penn State students. We planned and held an event that both informed students about what Habitat does, and introduced the derby. JD Enterprises is a group of six Penn State seniors that formed in the fall of 2012. Meet the members that comprise JD Enterprises below.
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Mary is a senior majoring in Public Relations with a minor in Business. She is originally from the Scranton, PA area, and spent last summer as a Marketing and Public Relations intern for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) at their Eastern PA Chapter in Philadelphia. After graduation in May, Mary hopes to move to Philadelphia and work for LLS or another non-profit in the area. She is the Account Manager for JD Enterprises, and
truly enjoyed working with Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County for the semester.
Rebecca Szwak, Media Director Becky is a senior from Mount Olive, New Jersey double-majoring in public relations and Spanish. She will graduate from Penn State in May 2013. She was a summer 2012 promotions team and social media intern for the State College Spikes and is currently an Account Associate at Happy Valley Communications. She is a student tutor at the Morgan Academic Support Center for Student Athletes and an active member of THON. She is the media contact for JD Enterprises
Julianne Legath, Media Director Julianne is from Johnstown, Pennsylvania. She is a senior and will be graduating in December 2012 with a major in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. Throughout her four years at Penn State, Julianne has participated in THON. She also works for the oncampus Housing and Food Services and serves as a campus representative for Columbia Pictures. After graduation, she hopes to pursue a career in entertainment public relations.
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Juliana Lustig, Creative Director Juliana is originally from Bucks County, PA. Born into a family of Penn Staters, there was no question where Juliana would attend college. She is expected to graduate from Penn State in May 2013 with a B.A. in Public Relations with a double minor in Business and Psychology. She is actively involved in her sorority, Alpha Phi, and the Four Diamonds Foundation. Juliana plans to move to a big city after graduation and work in the entertainment field of Public Relations. At JD Enterprises, Juliana is a creative specialist using Adobe Indesign and Microsoft publisher.
Chelsea Vielhauer, Research Director Chelsea will graduate from Penn State in May 2013 with a B.A. in Public Relations, minors in Business and Psychology, and as a member of the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism. She is currently an intern with the Penn State Athletic Communications Department, and is the sports information director for the Penn State fencing team. She is originally from the Philadelphia suburb of Blue Bell, Pa. At JC Enterprises, Chelsea is in charge of all the research that the firm conducts.
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Research Phase
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Habitat for Humanity welcomes everyone and offers housing to low-income families. The homes are supported financially by donations of individuals, corporations, faith groups and others. Under trained supervision, homes are built by volunteers and future homeowners in about six to nine months. Volunteers are urged to join one of the five committees Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County operates. However, the number of volunteers who donate their time to the local chapter varies by project size. Currently, Habitat for Humanity of the Greater Centre County area has partnered with the Centre County Housing and Land Trust on a subdivision on Woodycrest Street in Patton Township. The partnership was able to provide nine homes for qualified people. Future building plans will be dependent upon funding to build them.
Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County is a nonprofit housing organization that builds simple and affordable homes for those who lack shelter. It is one of 1,500 independent affiliates of Habitat for Humanity International. It is currently managed by six staff employees and a local board of directors, which is made up of 19 individuals. Habitat for Humanity is extremely grateful for their dedicated committee members. The local chapter is made up of five different committees, whose individual efforts all go toward fulfilling the nonprofit organizations mission. These committees include the Building Committee, the Family Services Committee, the Community Development Committee, the Restore Operating Committee, and the Site Selection Committee.
Background
All of the public relations efforts in the past have predominantly been word-of-mouth. In the past two years a variety of public relations procedures have been slowly put in place to inform the community about events, the need for volunteers and fundraising goals for the organization. The results of some of these efforts include print media, such as stories, editorials and advertising, as well as radio, TV interviews and social media. Though they have used them in the past, the current social media accounts are inactive at the time.
Habitat for Humanity is well-known and recognized by the community in State College. The organization is strongly rooted in religion, as it is a Christian housing ministry. However, the past leaders and staff members at the local affiliate did not promote it as that. The current leaders and board of directors are trying to rebuild that ministrys image throughout the community by educating the public more about what the organization does and who they serve. By doing this, they are hoping that their reputation will continue to grow. However, in efforts to reach and communicate with Penn State students, Habitat has only begun networking in a more active way. There has been a Penn State affiliate for quite some time, but the local affiliate was not actively engaging the students in events and activities.
Habitat for Humanitys key objective is to educate the community about its mission and raise money for future housing projects. Many people do not realize that according to a 2009 Pennsylvania Census, roughly 19.3 percent of Centre County residents live in poverty, compared to
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9|Page only 12.5 percent of Pennsylvania residents. After speaking with our client, we found that we need to specifically target Penn State students for our campaign. This is because our client faces the issue of informing Penn State students about Habitat for Humanitys purpose and spreading awareness of the cause. Because it is difficult to tap into the Penn State student body from an outside organization, our client plans to host an inaugural Home Run Derby event, specifically targeting students, to raise money and awareness about Habitat for Humanity. Our research efforts will be geared toward finding out what the best ways are to promote and market this event to Penn State students. During our research, we will be confronting the issue of what will attract Penn State students to participate in the Home Run Derby, what timing and pricing will be the most effective to ensure a high student participation rate, and what methods will attract students to learn more about Habitat for Humanity. We are planning to host a promotional event that will be geared toward educating students about Habitat for Humanity and making them aware of the upcoming Home Run Derby. We will be researching what specific elements, such as time of day, location, giveaways and activities, will make the promotional event successful.
The campaign has a few pitfalls that we will have to pay close attention to in order to overcome potential problems. Penn State is a large campus with vast opportunities for students to get involved. With over 40,000 students and thousands of student organizations, it is easy for a small organization like Habitat to be overlooked. Also, it may be harder to reach some of the older students at Penn State because a lot of upperclassmen already have strong commitments to clubs they have been involved in for many years. They may not be looking for a brand new club to fill up time in their already-hectic schedules. We have created a SWOT analysis to further demonstrate any strengths and weaknesses our campaign and client may have.
STRENGTHS -Already developed organization on campus -Huge involvement in the community -Noble and charitable cause OPPORTUNITIES -Habitats new partnership with MLB -State College Spikes connection to Habitat, close and present in the community. -Greek organizations need to partner with philanthropy. -Connection to State College area churches.
WEAKNESSES -Smaller organization -Confusion about real goals/objectives of organization -Lack of communication between Centre County and Penn State Chapters -The planned event is not ideal for the time of year. THREATS -Clubs/philanthropies with bigger followings on campus (THON, Greek life philanthropies)
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The Home Run Derby is prospectively taking place in the spring of 2013 at Medlar Field at Lubrano Park and will be open to the entire community. After meeting with our client, we discussed who the ideal target audience should be when promoting the organizations Home Run Derby. Our primary audience focus will strictly be toward getting Penn State students to attend. Our client has communicated with us several times that Penn State students are their hardest demographic to reach despite the fact that a large portion of Centre Countys population is Penn State students. Habitat for Humanity even has a student affiliate organization that is highly involved on campus. Centre Countys Habitat organization still struggles every year in getting students involved. The relationship between the Centre County organization and the Penn State student group has strengthened over the last several years. However, the student group heavily focuses on their annual spring break trip where they travel to build homes elsewhere in the United States. They focus more on this than the Centre County communitys yearly fundraisers and promotional events. The organization holds several promotional events throughout the year and is often present in local school districts, shopping centers and faith and community groups. Habitat for Humanity tries to maintain a strong presence in the community, in order to spread awareness and recruit volunteers. Even though Habitat for Humanity is able to manage a positive reputation among community members, it still has trouble reaching out to Penn State students. Our mission will be to team up with Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County and hold a promotional event to inform students about the Home Run Derby, as well as help spread awareness about the organization throughout campus. We will do this by communicating with our client and their affiliate organization that is involved on campus.
Alyssa Tracy, the Executive Director of the on-campus student affiliate group, overlooks approximately 200 active members. In order to make the Home Run Derby successful, we need the communitys help by recruiting people who have already volunteered and donated to the non-profit organization, either currently or in the past. This will be our secondary audience. We also want to recruit students and on-campus organizations who regularly participate in philanthropic events. There are over 700 clubs and organizations offered at Penn State, which is a huge amount. We are hoping that through our research we will be able to learn about the cognitions and behaviors of Penn State students so we can gauge why a majority of students havent participated in Habitat for Humanity in the past. We also hope we can learn how to direct our promotional event to entice more students and on-campus organizations to participate in upcoming Habitat events.
Introduction/Overview
JD Enterprises is working with Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County to plan and execute a campaign for the nonprofit organization. Members of JD Enterprises include Kelsey Flatau; copy editor, Julianne Legath; media director, Mary Smurkowski; account manager, Rebecca Szwak; media director, Juliana Lustig; creative director and Chelsea Vielhauer; research director. We are working with Missy Schoonover, Interim Executive Director at Habitat for Humanity, and Will West, a member of the Board of Directors at Habitat for Humanity. JD ENTERPRISES
Primary Research
11 | P a g e Our client plans to host an inaugural Home Run Derby event, specifically targeting Penn State students, to raise money and awareness about Habitat for Humanity. Our primary research efforts were geared toward finding out the best ways to promote and market this event to Penn State students. During our research, we confronted the issue of what will attract Penn State students to participate in the Home Run Derby, what timing and pricing will be the most effective to ensure a high student participation rate, and what methods will attract students to learn more about Habitat for Humanity. Since the Home Run derby is not set to take place until spring or fall of 2013, JD Enterprises is planning on hosting a promotional event that will be geared toward educating students about Habitat for Humanity and making them aware of the upcoming Home Run Derby. Therefore, we researched what specific elements, such as time of day, location, giveaways and activities, will make the promotional event successful.
Our surveys were distributed based on a convenience sample. We asked 120 students from all different grade levels and organizations on campus to fill out our survey. After compiling the quantitative data and running it through SPSS, we conducted a focus group and gathered qualitative data. We decided to target the Penn State Greek community because our client wanted to reach out to a large audience that is highly based on teamwork. Greek members make up a substantial portion of students on campus and are also highly involved in philanthropic events. We decided to contact Penn States Panhellenic Council and Interfraternity Council to set up a focus group to gain the perspective of Greek members on campus. After we conducted our focus group, we also approached Penn States Habitat for Humanity student organization. Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County and their student affiliate at Penn State work closely with one another. However, the community organization and on-campus organization do not collaborate on promotional and fundraising events. We scheduled a private interview with Alyssa Tracy, Executive Director for Habitat for Humanity at Penn State. Through Alyssa we were able to recruit members who are already dedicated and aware of Habitat for Humanity. We were also able to gain a greater insight on what strategies they have found to be successful and unsuccessful during their own promotional and fundraising events. Our primary research was effective and necessary because we needed to discover what our target audience already knew about Habitat for Humanity and what would increase the likelihood of their participation in the promotional event and Home Run Derby. By conducting a survey, focus group, and private interview we believe we compiled enough quantitative and qualitative data to make this campaign successful and to reach a larger student audience. Methodology
After meeting with Missy and Will, we decided what research strategy would best satisfy our needs in order to have the most effective campaign. Since we want to ultimately raise awareness about Habitat for Humanity in the Greater Centre County area and promote the Home Run Derby, we decided to gather our data through qualitative and quantitative research from Penn State students. JD Enterprises evaluated student responses in terms of what they think is the best way to reach a larger audience. We distributed surveys, formed a focus group, and set up a private interview to address specific questions that will further assist us in this campaign.
For our quantitative research, we conducted a convenience survey and distributed it among Penn State University students in the dorms, throughout the HUB, downtown and in classrooms. We chose to do a convenience survey because we wanted to obtain the preferences and opinions of
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12 | P a g e different students out of the entire Penn State student body. Doing a random survey like this provided us with well-rounded results. The survey allowed us to gather answers to some of the more straightforward questions about Habitat for Humanity and the Home Run Derby. Some of our questions asked what our target audience knows and does not know about Habitat for Humanity. One of our main goals of our campaign is to educate Penn State University students about Habitat for Humanity. In order to do this, we needed to know what information students they already knew. In addition, we needed to find out what will raise increase student participation at the derby for the Habitat for Humanity. This includes the best season, time of day and optimal registration fee.
For our qualitative research, we put together a focus group. Doing a focus group allowed us to get more in-depth responses from the participants. It also provided us with new ideas and different viewpoints that we may not have considered before. By asking open-ended questions in the group, we were able to get the participants talking about Habitat for Humanity and the event. This gave us a better idea of how to make the event successful. The majority of our focus group emphasized the topics that we were not able to fully cover when we distributed the survey. We chose to do a focus group with participants we didnt already know because we felt that the responses would be biased if the participants were familiar with the moderators. Research Question There are three main concepts we focused on in our research to help us plan, implicate and execute our campaign. Those three concepts are the publics current knowledge of Habitat for Humanity, what kind of interest there is around our target audience to participate in a Home Run Derby, and what kind of promotional event would be the most effective in attracting our target audience.
The first item we needed to measure was what our audience knew at the moment about Habitat for Humanity. A major goal of our campaign is to properly educate our target audience about Habitat. In order to gauge this, we asked participants if that had ever heard of Habitat for Humanity and if they would like to know more about how to get involved with Habitat.
The last area we focused on measuring was figuring out what kind of promotional event to host in order to grab the attention of our target audience. This event will promote the Home Run Derby and inform students about Habitat for Humanity. Our event will serve as an attempt to educate our target audience about Habitats goals, objectives and mission. Our campaign relies on our promotional event in order to ultimately increase attendance at the derby and to increase the overall number of students who are aware of Habitat for Humanitys cause. Our survey asked questions about what types of giveaways would entice attendance at our event and where students find out about on campus activities. JD ENTERPRISES
Our second area of focus measured what kind of interest our audience has in participating in a Home Run Derby. This was an important concept to measure in our campaign because the existing interest in this event will determine what kind of promoting we will be doing for it. In order to measure this through our research survey, we asked questions that pertained to what would make people excited to participate in a Home Run Derby. Our survey measured this by asking participants to rank how much interest they have in the Home Run Derby and how much theyd be willing to pay to participate in the event.
13 | P a g e Research Findings Our method of quantitative research was a one-page paper survey that contained 14 questions. We used a convenience sampling technique by passing out the survey to people all around campus.
We began our survey by asking participants if they were involved in on-campus activities. Out of the 120 respondents, 97 (80.8%) answered yes, while 23 (19.2%) answered no. We then asked if participants were involved in Greek life at Penn State. Forty-two (35%) of survey participants said they were involved in Greek life, while 78 (65%) said they were not. One of the major aspects of our research was finding out how educated students are about Habitat for Humanity. We began this process by asking survey participants if they know what Habitat for Humanity is. We learned that an overwhelming number of the participants surveyed do know what Habitat for Humanity is. Of the 120 people surveyed, 107 (89.2%) people answered yes to the question, and only 13 (10.8%) people answered no. We then asked if participants were aware that there is a Penn State affiliate of Habitat for Humanity, and the response was quite different. Of the 120 people surveyed 72 (60%) of people answered yes, and 48 (40%) of people answered no. The next question on our survey asked if participants knew how to go about getting involved with Habitat for Humanity. Of the 120 people surveyed, only 32 (26.7%) answered yes, while 88 (73.3%) answered no. It was important for us to analyze the data based off of those who are interested in participating in the Home Run Derby because that is who we will be targeting. We asked participants to respond to whether or not they would be interested in participating in a Home Run Derby on a Likert-like scale of one to seven, with one being not interested at all and seven being very interested. That variable was then made into another variable that separated those who answered one to three and four to seven. We then ran data analysis on the group that answered four to seven in order to study the group who would be most interested in participating in the Home Run Derby.
A total of 56 out of the original 120 surveyed answered with a four or above, indicating that they are interested in participating in a Home Run Derby. Of the 56 interested in participating, 45 (80.4%) are involved in on-campus activities, and 11 (19.6%) are not currently involved. Twentysix (46.4%) of those interested in participating are members of Greek life at Penn State while 30 (53.7%) are not. Fifty-two (92.9%) subjects who are interested in participating in a Home Run Derby know what Habitat for Humanity is, while 4 (7.1%) do not know what the organization is. Thirty (53.6%) participants are aware that there is a Penn State affiliate of Habitat for Humanity, and 26 (46.4%) are not aware. When asked if they know how to go about getting involved with Habitat for Humanity, 17 (30.4%) of those who said they would be interested in participating in a Home Run Derby said yes, while 39 (69.6%) answered no.
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After finding out if students were familiar with Habitat and how to get involved with the Penn State affiliate, we were curious to find out which of our participants were currently or have been affiliated with a chapter of Habitat for Humanity in the past. Out of the 120 individuals interviewed 27 (22.5%) are affiliated in some way, and 93 (77.5%) have never been affiliated with the organization.
We also asked respondents to tell us how much they were willing to spend per person if they were to sign up to participate on a team for the Home Run Derby. A total of 70 (58.3%) students said that they were willing to spend under $10 to register for an event like this, while 40 (33.3%) said that they were willing to spend $11-15. As we expected, the $16-20 selection only attracted 8 (6.7%) individuals, and the $21-25 bracket only attracted 2 (1.7%) of individuals.
One of the main goals of our research was to find out what season/semester students felt was the best time to hold the derby. We gave respondents the option of winter, spring, summer and fall. As assumed, none of our 120 respondents suggested having the derby in the winter. A total of 90 (75%) individuals suggested to hold the event in the spring, 9 (7.5%) suggested the summer and 21 (17.5%) felt that the fall was the best time for an event like this to be held.
We were also interested to see what types of giveaways interest students the most when it comes to a promotional event, or signing up for something. Forty-five (46.4%) out of 120 responses indicated that t-shirts were the most intriguing, 28 (23.3%) suggested food, 24 (20.0%) suggested tickets and 23 (19.2%) said that prizes were what drew them in the most.
As far as the planning of the Derby and promotional event, we were curious to find out a number of things from our respondents. Interest in participating in a Home Run Derby was something that was extremely important for us to find out. As stated above, we created a filter to separate responses. Individuals who showed no interest, or selected one to three on our seven point Likert Scale, were grouped into category one. This indicated that the information they provided us was not necessarily as important as the information from individuals who selected four to seven indicating that they showed a high interest.
Even though this information is extremely helpful as we plan our campaign, we were curious to find out whether or not people who were actually interested in participating had different responses than those individuals who were not interested in participating. Since a total of 56 individuals showed that they were interested, the filter we created focused solely on their responses.
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15 | P a g e Out of the 56 interested respondents 15 (26.8%) said that they were or are affiliated with Habitat for Humanity in one way or another. The season that was found most popular by those interested was spring with 44 (78.6%) of respondents. Summer and fall were both tied with 6 (10.7%) or a total of 12 (21.4%) of individual responses.
As far as the price the students were willing to pay to participate in the derby goes, out of the students interested, 25 (44.6%) of respondents said that they would be willing to spend under $10. Twenty-four (42.9%) of respondents interested said they would be willing to spend $11-15, 5 (8.9%) said they would be willing to spend $16-20 and 2 (3.6%) said they would be willing to spend $21-25 dollars to participate as part of a team for the Home Run Derby.
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16 | P a g e According to the data we obtained through our survey, out of the 120 people we surveyed, 43 (35.8%) of them were male and 77 (64.2%) of them were female. Out of the 56 people who indicated they were interested in the Home Run Derby on the survey, 24 (42.9%) of the participants were male, and 32 (57.1%) of the participants were female. In order to understand how much interest each gender has in the Home Run Derby, we figured out that 55.8% of all male participants who took the survey are interested in this event. However, it was found that only 41.6% of all female participants who took the survey are interested in the Home Run Derby. This data indicates that more males are interested in the Home Run Derby than females.
The ages of the 120 people surveyed ranged between 18 years old and 23 years old. Our initial data collection displayed that 18 (15%) participants were 18 years old, 18 (15%) participants were 19 years old, 28 (23.3%) participants were 20 years old, 43 (35.8%) participants were 21 years old, 11 (9.2%) participants were 22 years old and 2 (1.7%) participants were 23 years old. Out of the 56 people who indicated they were interested in the Home Run Derby, 11 (19.6%) participants were 18 years old, 6 (10.7%) were 19 years old, 12 (21.4%) participants were 20 years old, 22 (39.3%) participants were 21 years old, 4 (7.1%) participants were 22 years old and 0 participant was 23 years old. After collecting this data, we calculated the amount of participants who had interest in a Home Run Derby within each age group. The data showed that 61.1% of all surveyed 18-year-olds showed interest, as well as 33.3% of all surveyed 19-year-olds, 42.9% of all surveyed 20-year-olds, 51.2% of all surveyed 21-year-olds, 36.4% of all surveyed 22year-olds and 50% of all surveyed 23-year-olds. After analyzing this data, it is apparent that 18year-olds are the most interested in a Home Run Derby.
We asked participants to rank the top three methods they use to receive information about on-campus activities. The choices we listed included classes, current campus groups, mail, flyers, social media, the HUB, the Daily Collegian and other. This data showed that 54 (45%) participants out of the 120 who were surveyed chose social media as their top information receiving method. Twenty-six (21.7%) participants ranked the HUB as their second highest information gathering method about on-campus activities. Ten (8.3%) participants chose learning about on-campus activities through classes as their third highest choice. After filtering out the participants who were not interested in a Home Run Derby, we found out that 29 (51.8%) participants ranked social media as their first choice of information gathering about on-campus activities. Out of the 56 interested people, the HUB was ranked second highest as an information gathering method by 12 (21.4%) participants. The third highest ranked information gathering method was through campus groups people were already affiliated with. This came out to be 4 (7.1%) participants ranking campus groups as their third highest choice.
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Interpretation After analyzing our data in SPSS, a few important conclusions can be formed. Most survey participants do know what Habitat for Humanity is; however, many do not know that there is a Penn State affiliate of Habitat. This is important for our research because it will be important for us to raise awareness about Habitat around the Penn State community. Informing more students about both the Penn State affiliate and Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County can draw in participants for the Home Run Derby and the separate promotional event that we will be planning. A majority of students answered that they do not know how to go about getting involved in Habitat. This is very important for our campaign because one of the main goals, besides promoting the Home Run Derby, is to raise awareness about how to get involved with Habitat. This can also serve as a pre-event measurement that can help us evaluate the success of our campaign at the end of implementation.
We also found that a large majority of students we surveyed are involved in on-campus activities. This finding has a few implications for our campaign. Since many students are so involved on campus they have access to many listservs, which can help spread the word about our event, the Home Run Derby, and Habitat in general. Since a Home Run Derby is a team event, students who are already involved in on-campus activities would most likely find it easier to form teams to participate. Therefore, it will be important for us to target these students who are already involved. One significant group we will have to take into account when planning our campaign will be Greek life at Penn State. When we analyzed our data based off of who was interested in participating in the Home Run Derby, there is a significantly higher number of Greeks that are interested than when we analyzed the data using all participants. 46% of survey respondents that said they were interested in participating in the Derby are involved in Greek Life. This will be an important finding in the planning of our campaign because Greeks, similar to those involved in other on-campus activities, have access to listservs as well as easy formation of teams. Based off of these findings, it seems that Greeks will be an important audience to target in our campaign. JD ENTERPRISES
18 | P a g e The data we found with both our filter on and off showed that the majority of students were not affiliated with Habitat for Humanity in any way both now and in the past. This allows us to make a general assumption that most students are not and have not been affiliated with Habitat. We found that students, both interested and not interested, feel the most opportune time to have a Home Run Derby would be in the spring. This information is extremely important for us because before conducting research, we thought that the best time to have the derby would be in the fall when students come back to school and during the MLB season.
When students were asked about the price theyd feel comfortable paying to participate in the derby a majority selected the ranges of under $10 and $11-15. From this, we can make an assumption that students would be willing to spend between $5-15 to participate in the derby. The question that asked about what giveaways would entice students to participate or attract them to a promotional event display that t-shirts were the most popular among those students who were interested, and also those who were not interested. Food, tickets and prizes all followed through in order with similar percentages, allowing us to see that most students in general are attracted to promotional events when there are a variety of freebies offered. However, when we looked at the students who were interested, tickets seemed to attract the lowest percentage, which showed us that students who would be interested in participating would not be as interested in tickets. By examining the data, we found that there is a slightly higher percentage of males than females who are interested in the Home Run Derby. Even though the number of females who were surveyed is higher, the ratio of males who show interest in the derby is higher. The data indicates that a larger amount of students interested in the derby are 18 years old. This correlates with the age of most freshman students; hence a majority of the students who display interest in the Home Run Derby are freshman. The other age group that shows a higher interest in the derby is 20 and 21-year-old students. These ages represent mainly juniors and seniors.
After analyzing the data about information gathering methods, we realized that social media is the best way to reach out to students who were interested in the Home Run Derby. The second most effective method of reaching out to students interested in the Home Run Derby is by utilizing the HUB. Interested students indicated that they prefer learning information about campus activities through campus groups they are already affiliated with as their third choice. Application Many of our research findings will be used to plan our campaign. We found through both our survey and focus group that most students have a slight idea about what Habitat for Humanity does, but not necessarily how to go about getting involved in Habitat if they wanted to. Based off of our research, we now know that we need to make this one of the main overall goals of our campaign.
Our research also showed us that two of our major audiences for our campaign are students who are already involved in on-campus activities and Greek life. Both the survey and focus group respondents indicated that these students would have a higher interest in a Home Run Derby. There is also logical belief that these participants would be able to form groups to compete easier than those who were not already involved in groups. This data helped us come to the conclusion that these two groups of students will be part of our primary audience. JD ENTERPRISES
19 | P a g e Prior to the research process, we were very unsure about when was the best time to hold the Home Run Derby, as well as the separate promotional event. Both our focus group and survey clearly indicated that the best time to hold the derby is in the spring semester. We also gained a lot of other great information regarding timing and optimal places to hold the events from our research. All of this information will be turned into the strategies and tactics part of our campaign. Seeing that the majority of students were not and have not been affiliated with Habitat, this information will be used to assume that our efforts to educate students about what Habitat is and does will not necessarily be wasted. Although some students may not be interested in finding out more information about Habitat for Humanity, we will not be repeating information to many individuals who are already aware of Habitats mission. This data also shows us that holding a promotional event where we can distribute information would be successful.
As far as the interest in participating in a Home Run Derby goes, creating a filter to better examine the responses of the individuals who are actually interested in participating was extremely helpful. This ultimately allowed us to focus on those responses that are more crucial for us to better understand the opinions and preferences of people who are interested in the derby. Finding out which season students felt was the best time to hold the derby was both an extremely important aspect of our research, as well as an interesting find. Originally, as a group we had thought that holding this type of event would work best if it was planned for the fall. However, after looking at the data we received from the students who participated in our survey, we found that students feel the best season to hold the derby would be in the spring. Although this information is helpful and will provide our client with a large piece of information that they have been searching for, it brings up some expected issues such as working around the baseball teams schedule in order to have access Medlar Field. Another issue this presents us with is that for weather purposes the derby would have to be held towards the end of the semester. This could interfere with students final schedules and ultimately make them uninterested in participating in the derby.
We found out that the best price to charge students to participate in the Home Run Derby would be between $5-15. This information will also be helpful to our client as they prepare to plan the derby for the spring semester. Knowing that most students are willing to spend between $5-15 allows the client to have a reasonable price range in mind when deciding how much to charge students to participate. We hope that by having this information our client will stick to our suggestion of charging students a price within the given price range to ultimately attract more participants from the student body at Penn State.
The information we received from the question we asked about giveaways will greatly help us plan our promotional event. The majority of students we surveyed were attracted to the variety of suggestions we made, which included t-shirts, food, tickets and prizes. This allowed us to understand that the best way to attract the most number of students to our event would be to have a variety of giveaways. We will use this information when brainstorming and deciding what will be handed out to students who attend our event. Because males are more interested in the derby than females, we will mainly try to channel our efforts toward getting males to participate. We will do this by strongly encouraging teams to sign up throughout Greek life. We will also attempt to gain as many female volunteers as possible by encouraging them to beat the boys and to create unity amongst their teams.
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20 | P a g e Most of the students who indicated interest in the derby are between the ages of 18 and 21. Because all of these respondents are Penn State students, we will utilize channels of communication specifically geared toward these college students. We will also plan a promotional event that is geared toward getting the typical college student excited. This may include free food, loud music, free t-shirts and fun games.
In order to reach out to students interested in the Home Run Derby the best way, we will utilize social media outlets as part of our strategy and tactics. We will primarily focus on Facebook and Twitter to inform Penn State students about the derby and Habitat. Besides social media, we will also channel our efforts toward using the HUB to promote the Home Run Derby and Habitat for Humanity. Because our survey and focus group showed that the HUB is one of the better places to reach students, we are considering hosting a promotional event there to inform students of the Home Run Derby and Habitat for Humanity. We also plan to communicate with other campus groups to communicate with students about the derby and Habitat because this was indicated as another top ranked method of gathering information. In order to fulfill this concept, we plan to contact student organization leaders and have them share information about Habitat for Humanity and the Home Run Derby to their members. Focus Group: Findings, Interpretation & Application We also conducted a focus group as a form of qualitative research. The focus group contained six members of the Panhellenic Executive Board, which oversees the Greek life on campus. We broke the focus group down into three main topics of focus: Habitat for Humanity, the Home Run Derby, and the separate promotional event.
Section two of our focus group centered on the Home Run Derby. The participants all unanimously agreed that a Home Run Derby is something that would definitely appeal to a number of Greeks, especially fraternities. Participants also agreed about what would entice students to participate in the derby, which included doing something fun with friends, helping the community, and community service hours. Prizes that the focus group participants mentioned they would be interested in receiving included gift cards to various downtown locations including Mad Mex and Gingerbread Man. We also asked the group when would be the best time to hold the derby. A majority of the participants said March would be the best month because its not too close to finals week and it starts to get warmer outside. They thought Friday and Sunday are the best days to hold the derby because its when people are the least busy. The focus group concluded that between noon and 2pm is the best time of day to host the event because its the warmest part of the day.
The first section of our focus group centered on what students already know about Habitat for Humanity, and what they think Penn State students would want to know about Habitat. The majority of participants had a good idea about what Habitat for Humanity was, but were not completely sure. One participant said, Im not completely sure that I know the entire background, but from what I know its a non-profit organization that helps build homes for people that cant afford them due to different circumstances. We then explained what Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County does for the community and asked participants what aspects of that information they think Penn State students would want to become aware of. The majority of participants said that it would be useful to students to know how they can get involved, and who the families are that get to live in the homes Habitat builds. Specifically in terms of Greek Life, participants wanted to know how the Greek community can help and have their volunteer hours count for their community service hour requirements.
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21 | P a g e The final section of our focus group centered in on the promotional event that we will be holding this fall to promote the derby and raise awareness about Habitat. We first asked where the best place to hold a promotional event would be. The two answers that were spoken about were the HUB and Fraternity Row. Participants agreed that mid-day on a weekday would be the best time to hold an event in the HUB, and a weekend afternoon would be the best time for a frat row event. It was unanimously agreed upon that free food and prizes at promotional events is one of the best ways to draws students in. One participant stated, Food is definitely one of the best ways. Everyone always gives out pizza and candy. If you could make something unique, or even baseball related, it could attract a lot of people. We then discussed flyers and informational handouts. The overall consensus was that flyers that promote an event rather than simply say help us by donating often catch the eyes of students. Our participants said they will normally disregard and throw out flyers that are always about the same things, like blood drives and donating money.
The importance of social media was brought up in our focus group by a number of participants. Everyone agreed that Facebook would be a great way to get the word out about an event, especially within the Greek community. The councils that oversee fraternities and sororities on campus are also a great resource because they can relay messages to thousands of students. After reviewing the results from our focus group, we were able to draw some conclusions. The first thing that we were able to gain from the focus group, is that most of the participants had a good understanding about what Habitat for Humanity is, however, many could not provide great detail about the efforts the non-profit organization makes each year. Through our promotional event for the Home Run Derby, we are hoping to create a greater awareness about Habitat for Humanity and provide students with a more in-depth insight on what the organization does for the Centre County area. When we asked our participants what they thought students would want to learn about Habitat for Humanity, we learned that many students would be interested in getting involved if given the appropriate steps in learning how to volunteer. Our participants also highlighted that by learning about the families that their efforts were benefiting would be a good motivator in getting students to volunteer. Lastly, we learned that especially for the Greek community, it is important to stress how their volunteer hours can count for their mandatory community service hours. We plan on answering these questions for students in a clear and concise way through our promotional efforts, such as flyers, pamphlets, and an informational session.
We learned through our focus group participants that prizes and giveaways are necessary, in order to entice students to participate. When we asked the group specifically what types of prizes would intrigue most students to participate in the Home Run Derby, most answered gift certificates to locations downtown. With this knowledge, we decided that we will solicit to stores and restaurants in downtown, State College. Since Habitat for Humanity is a non-profit organization and we do not have endless funds, asking for donations will be our best method for accumulating appropriate prizes for students. We also learned through our focus group session, that the best time of year to hold the Home Run Derby, would be the month of March. We asked our participants to reflect on their reasoning and learned that according to students there are too many events in the fall with football season, canning trips, and holiday breaks. They thought that squeezing in a Home Run Derby would be difficult. Also, our participants mentioned that in the beginning of spring semester, the weather is still too cold to be outside. However, in March the weather begins to get warmer and still gives students enough time before finals to participate. We also learned through conversation that Friday and Sundays between the hours of noon and 2pm would be the best time to hold the Derby. The theory behind this reasoning is that these are the days students have the freest time, and its also the warmest time of day. This knowledge will be extremely helpful to our client because it gives them enough time to plan and implement the Derby by knowing exactly how to reach the largest number of student participants.
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Our final conversation with our focus group discussed promotional efforts, such as flyers and pamphlets. Our participants mentioned to us the importance of being creative in our designs and creating something that would catch students attention, rather than a plain flyer. As a group we have already discussed several ideas of how to think outside the box and create unique designs. We discussed the idea of baseball card handouts that will have stats about Habitat for Humanity on the back. We also discussed a logo and how we can incorporate the baseball theme into our designs. Additionally we asked our participants what the best method is for recruiting student participants for both the Home Run Derby and promotional event. The participants talked about the importance of social media and especially reaching students through Facebook events. It was also mentioned that if possible we should send a message on any club or student organizations listserv. This would be one of the most powerful ways to reach a large student audience simultaneously, especially for Greek members. This was great advice, because our group has several connections with the Greek community at Penn State. Writing an informative message and sending it to different chapters listservs would be an easy and timely method in order to spread the word about our promotional event quickly.
The last section of our focus group was the most important to our group because it discussed the promotional event we plan to hold in the fall to promote the Home Run Derby. After talking with our participants we came to the realization that the best time to hold a promotional event would either be in the HUB, midday on a weekday, or on a weekend afternoon in frat row. However, it was agreed, that no matter where we decide to hold the derby, free food and prizes must be made available in order to draw in the most students. After discussing this topic with our participants, weve decided to contact and schedule an appointment with the office of Student Activities Event Management, located in the HUB, and discuss possible dates and restrictions for implementing this promotional event. If we can find an available date that works around our campaign schedule, we plan on having the promotional event in the HUB during a weekday.
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PLANNING PHASE
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Our first primary audience will focus on Penn State students who are already involved in on-campus activities. We found that 80% of students who answered that they would be interested in a Home Run Derby were already involved with on-campus activities. This group of students would also have an easier time forming teams to participate in a Home Run Derby than students who are not involved in on-campus activities. They already have access to many group members and listserv email records that would aid in the formation of teams.
The main public our client would like us to target is Penn State students. Based on our research, we have broken this general group down into more specific student audiences. These groups were found to have the most interest in learning about Habitat for Humanity and participating in the Home Run Derby.
Key Public
The second key segment of our audience that we would like to target is Penn State students who are involved in religious and/or service organizations on campus. Students are involved in these types of organizations because they enjoy donating their time and helping the community. Therefore, these students may be more apt to participate in the Home Run Derby because it would be serving as a fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity.
There are two key segments of our primary audience that we would like to specifically focus on. The first key segment that we would like to target is students involved in Greek life at Penn State. From both our focus group and survey we found that these students may be one of the most interested groups in terms of participating in the Home Run Derby. A total of 46.4% of survey respondents who stated they were interested in participating in the Home Run Derby are involved in Greek life at Penn State. During our focus group with six members of the Panhellenic Executive Board, participants unanimously agreed that a Home Run Derby is something that would definitely appeal to a number of Greeks, especially fraternities. These students would also be able to form teams to participate in the derby very easily. Spreading word about the derby throughout the Greek system would be substantially easier than it would be to spread the information to non-Greek students.
Since there is currently no date set for the derby, it would be difficult for our group to solely promote the event and get students to commit (monetarily) so far in advance. Because of that, we are going to use this opportunity to hold an informational event for Habitat that mainly promotes the organization, but also promotes the derby at the same time. Since our clients main focus is a future Home Run Derby, it is important to us to make sure that we spread awareness and create interest about the event. Our current plan for this event is to have an informational session in the HUB during Hunger & Homeless Awareness week. We feel that holding this event in the HUB would be most beneficial for spreading awareness about Habitat in general, as well as gaining prospective interest of students in the derby.
Plan
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25 | P a g e Our current plan includes creating informational flyers to pass out to interested students. These flyers are made to resemble a baseball card with stats, or facts, on the back to educate students about what Habitat for Humanity does. We feel that this is not only an interesting way to gain attention, but also more memorable than just handing students a loose piece of paper with some information on it.
We plan to have several free giveaways at our event table. These include cupcakes decorated like baseballs to keep the derby theme in mind, as well as giveaways that will be provided to us from our contacts, Missy and Will. We also plan to set up some type of game related to Habitat so our event will be more interactive for students.
GOAL: Because there is no set date for the Home Run Derby yet, our goal is to raise awareness of what Habitat for Humanity does and what the future derby event will entail. We also want to raise awareness and promote the on-campus affiliate. Out of the 56 respondents from our survey who were interested in participating in the derby, 30 (53.6%) individuals were aware of the Penn State affiliate. We hope that by raising awareness about both of these organizations more students will gain background knowledge and appreciate what Habitat does. OBJECTIVE 1 (Informational): To increase attendance at our informational event about Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County and the Home Run Derby by 200 students by November 14, 2012. STRATEGY 1: Create a social media campaign to promote the Habitat for Humanity informational event and the Home Run Derby during Hunger and Homeless Awareness Week
RATIONALE: Through our primary and secondary research, we discovered that the majority of Penn State students get their information about what is going on on-campus through social media outlets. By using the social media outlets that students often use for information, we will be able to raise the attendance at the informational session therefore increasing the number of people who are aware of Habitat for Humanity's purpose. Tactic 1: Using Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre Countys Facebook, we plan to post statuses encouraging event attendance. These statuses will promote our event by letting students know when, where and what our event is.
Tactic 2: Using Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre Countys Facebook, we plan to share our promotional video & ask followers to share the video on their Facebook accounts to increase exposure. By posting a video, we hope that we can visually please viewers and encourage them to learn more about Habitat at our event. Ideally wed love to have students share the video on their Facebook pages so more and more students will view it. Tactic 3: Using Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre Countys Facebook, we plan to post in Penn State Facebook groups encouraging event attendance. These groups vary from majors, classes and interests and have hundreds of Penn State students as members. This
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26 | P a g e will target groups of many different backgrounds and reach out to a large number of students.
Tactic 4: Using Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre Countys Facebook, we plan to message Greek Facebook accounts and on-campus group Facebook accounts. In these messages, we plan to ask these students to share our promotional video and statuses about the event on their Facebook pages. This will ensure that we are spreading awareness of our event and cause to their audiences. Tactic 5: Using Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre Countys Twitter, we plan to post tweets encouraging event attendance. These tweets will promote our event by letting students know when, where and what our event it.
Tactic 6: Using Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre Countys Twitter, we plan to tweet at Penn State affiliated Twitter accounts and ask for a re-tweet. By having these Penn State accounts re-tweet our tweets, their Twitter followers will be able to see our messages. Because most of these Penn State accounts have hundreds and thousands of Twitter followers, our tweets will be spread throughout a huge audience. STRATEGY 2: Utilize traditional media outlets to promote the Habitat for Humanity informational event and the Home Run Derby during Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week.
RATIONALE: One of the best ways to reach out to the large Penn State student population is through traditional media outlets, such as The Collegian, Centre Daily Times, Onward State and B94.5. These media outlets are very popular forms of communicating messages to students and keeping them informed of current events. By utilizing these outlets, students will be informed of our upcoming event and essentially attend it. Tactic 1: Pitch to The Daily Collegian to inform Penn State students about our upcoming informational table event at the HUB. According to The Daily Collegians 2010-2011 Marketing Report, 84.5% of Penn State students read this newspaper. With a high readership rate, we hope to reach a large number of Penn State students by utilizing The Daily Collegian.
Tactic 2: Pitch to Centre Daily Times to inform Penn State students and community members about our upcoming informational table event at the HUB. The Centre Daily Times is one of the top newspapers that circulates throughout the State College area. Penn State students are frequent readers of this newspaper. Tactic 3: Pitch to Onward State to inform Penn State students about our upcoming informational table event at the HUB. According to Onward States website, it is one of the quickest and most informative places for Penn State students, faculty, staff, and alumni to find the news that matters most to them. Because of this, we plan to utilize the quickness and convenience of the online news outlet to reach out to Penn State students about our event.
Tactic 4: Pitch to B94.5 to inform Penn State students and community members about our upcoming informational table event at the HUB. B94.5 is the most listened to radio station
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27 | P a g e for Penn State students. By utilizing this radio station, a vast number of Penn State students will be reached with just one radio broadcast.
OBJECTIVE 2 (Attitudinal): To establish positive attitudes about Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County and the Home Run Derby by 50 students before November 30, 2012. STRATEGY 1: Hold an informational event during Hunger and Homeless Awareness week to inform and educate students about Habitat for Humanity and the Home Run Derby.
Tactic 5: Send out email blasts to Greek listervs and on-campus group listservs to inform organization members of our upcoming informational table even at the HUB. Listservs are a great resource to reach out to a large number of people at once in a particular group. Most communication and announcements are done this way throughout organizations and Greek life. This method of outreach will ensure increased awareness of our promotional event amongst each organization and Greek group.
Tactic 6: Distribute baseball card flyers with Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County stats to attendees at the event to provide them with essential background information of the organization. These flyers tie in well with the baseball theme of a Home Run Derby, so we think this will be a hit at the event. The flyers will be creative and informative so students will leave the event with a solid basis of Habitat for Humanitys background.
RATIONALE: Through our research we learned that while people have heard of Habitat for Humanity, not a lot of Penn State students are aware of what the organization actually does. By holding an informational event and educating students through multiple modes of communication, we will be able to increase the knowledge that students have about Habitat for Humanity.
OBJECTIVE 3 (Behavioral): To create a listserv with 50 students who show interest in finding out more information about the derby by November 16, 2012. STRATEGY 1: Make certain that our informational event is memorable and creates a long lasting positive impression of Habitat for Humanity to ensure that students will sign up for the derby. RATIONALE: We want to make sure that our event stands out and creates a fun, exciting environment for students. By having free food, giveaways, music, Penn State baseball celebrities and games we are hoping to increase the likelihood that students will sign up for the derby. We also plan to create a beneficial basis of what Habitat for Humanity is by showing students that the organization is not only informational, but its also fun.
Tactic 2: Have Penn State Habitat for Humanity members speak to event attendees about the organization & the Home Run Derby via face-to-face communication. Members of Penn States Habitat affiliate have a great deal of knowledge about the organization and its goals. We plan to have members speak to event attendees about the positive aspects of Habitat and why getting involved is a great idea. These members will also inform students about the derby and encourage them to sign up.
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28 | P a g e Tactic 1: Have Penn State baseball players and the Spikes mascot take photos with event attendees. These photos will only be visible on Habitat for Humanitys Facebook page, so this will encourage attendees to visit the Facebook and hopefully like it.
Tactic 2: Give event attendees free baseball cupcakes and Habitat giveaways. These will only be distributed to students who sign up on our email list. These freebies give attendees an incentive to sign up to learn more about the derby. Tactic 3: Have attendees play an interactive baseball/Habitat themed game. By having attendees engage in an activity at our event, it will ensure that they are captivated in learning about Habitat, while also having fun. A fun event is a memorable event.
Theme
Themes/Messages
Because the ultimate goal of our campaign is to increase awareness of the upcoming Home Run Derby and Habitat for Humanity, we decided to theme our event around baseball and homelessness. We were sparked by the notion of hitting homelessness out of the park, and focused our overall theme around that. Messages We plan to disseminate the following messages to Penn State students while promoting our event and during our event.
1. Support National Hunger and Homeless Awareness Week. Hit homelessness right out of the park. The week of November 10-18th is National Hunger and Homeless Awareness Week. Each year Habitat for Humanity works extremely hard dedicating their week to educating individuals about the non-profit organization and creating awareness about their efforts nationwide.
3. Homelessness does exist in Centre County, PA. Join the build, help the cause. Many Penn State students have the misconception that the Centre County area does not experience any issues of poverty. It is our job to create awareness and educate students on campus that homelessness still exists in Centre County. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18.5% of Centre County residents are below poverty level, in comparison to only 12.4% of Pennsylvania residents. 4. Its a hand up, not a handout! JD ENTERPRISES
2. Habitat for Humanity of the Greater Centre County is a nonprofit housing organization that builds simple and affordable homes for those who lack shelter. The central issue we want to address at our promotional event is to clear up any misconceptions or confusion about what Habitat does. After clarifying Habitats true purpose, we are hoping to get people excited about possibly joining the organization.
29 | P a g e Habitat for Humanity firmly believes in assisting low-income families, however they do not believe in giving away free homes. Habitat requires all families to put in 500 hours of sweat equity, working side-by-side with volunteers to construct their own home, as well as assist on other builds.
5. Step up to the plate, and strike out homelessness. Make a team, hit some home runs, and sign up for the Home Run Derby! We would like to make Penn State students aware of the upcoming Home Run Derby, prospectively taking place in the spring of 2013 at Medlar Field at Lubrano Park. Students have the chance to sign up for the derby and form their own teams to compete at the event.
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IMPLEMENTATION PHASE
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Timetable
Sunday, November 4, 2012 Sunday, November 4, 2012 Monday, November 12, 2012 Monday, November 12, 2012
Habitat for Humanity PSU Chapter Promotional HUB Table HUB Promotional Event
In addition to pitching to the local media, we will focus on getting Penn State campus groups at our event to achieve our goal of more student awareness and participation of Habitat for Humanity. To do this we will send out email blasts to campus group listservs on Sunday, November 4, 2012. This gives the groups about a week before the event to become aware of the event and also make their plans to attend. This is an optimal date because it is enough time to make future plans, but it is not so far in advance that the event will be forgotten in the minds of busy students. Concurrently with these email blasts, we will upload our promotional video. This will give students additional information about the event right as they are learning of its existence. The video will provide additional information in a fun and exciting way, which will motivate students to attend. On Monday, November 14, 2012, JD Enterprises will host the promotional event for Habitat for Humanity and the Home Run Derby in the HUB. This is a prime day to host the event because it kicks off Homeless Awareness Week. In partnership with our event, the Penn State University chapter of Habitat for Humanity will be hosting their own informational table in the HUB. This will help direct traffic to the event down the stairs of the HUB, as well as spreading the message to a wider audience and reaching as many people as possible.
After completing the planning and research stages of the campaign, we will begin outreach implementation on Monday, October 29, 2012. This will start with pitching press releases to the traditional media outlets in the State College area, including the Centre Daily Times, Onward State and The Daily Collegian. In addition, we will pitch radio news releases to the local radio station B94.5. This date will give the media outlets 2 weeks to process our pitches and hopefully cover our event.
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In order to make our event as successful as possible, we used a variety of resources to accommodate our promotional plans. Our basic needs included paper and pens for sign-up sheets, a white tablecloth and two long tables. We did not have to purchase any of these items because we already possessed the paper, pens and tablecloth. We used tables from the HUB for us to set up our event.
Resources
In order to make our event special and unique, we designed it based off of the Habitat for Humanity color scheme and baseball. We purchased poster paper to create elaborate signs to display in front of our tables. This was to let attendees know what the event was for. We also purchased blue, green, and white colored balloons, as well as two baseball balloons, in order to make our tables stand out in the HUB. We used an iPod dock to play loud, upbeat music in order to attract attention. One of the most useful resources we utilized in order to gain event attendance was Ike the Spike. He walked around and encouraged passers-by to come to our event.
During our event we gave attendees a Habitat for Humanity information flyer that mimicked a baseball card. These cards were printed off utilizing Penn State printing services. We also gave attendees the chance to spin a lottery wheel in order to obtain more chances to win a raffle prize. We raffled off a luxurious 20 person suite during the 2013 Spikes baseball season. For every person who signed up on our email list we gave them a complimentary baseball themed cupcake. Other giveaway resources included in our freebie selection were pens, pennants, pins, a laptop case, key chains, coffee mugs and other Spikes goodies. All of these were donated by the Spikes baseball organization. Budget Baseball cupcakes: $50 Balloons: $15 Helium tank: $20 Poster paper: $10 Glue: $2 Spikes freebies: donation Lottery wheel: borrowed from Habitat for Humanity
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Introduction
Evaluation
There are many ways in which JD Enterprises chose to evaluate the success of our campaign. We analyzed each initial objective, and then broke down each strategy, in order to figure out what was done well and what could have been done more effectively. Ultimately, we found that our campaign was successful since we achieved a majority of our objectives. Overall, we were very pleased with the outcome of the campaign, and the way that our group worked together. Evaluation Criteria JD Enterprises used three different forms of criteria in order to measure the evaluation of our campaign:
Message Analysis (Output Effectiveness): We analyzed and measured the placement and reach of the media impressions our group received. We made sure to consider the location of the message, tone, potential audience, length, and content. Anecdotal: We were able to evaluate our campaign through informal discussions with the students who attended our event. We considered opinions, knowledge, awareness, understanding, and short-term behavior.
Methodology There were numerous different methods that JD Enterprises obtained, evaluated and utilized feedback that was relevant to our campaign.
Before and After Comparisons: Since the Home Run Derby will be new event for Habitat for Humanity, part of our job was to raise awareness for it. We asked students to sign up with their email address in order to receive more information. We were able to compare the number of emails after the event to the number before (zero) as a way to evaluate our campaign.
We first evaluated the reach of our campaign based on how many informational handouts were given out at our event. These informational handouts were in the form of baseball cards in order to keep with the Home Run Derby theme. Knowing how many baseball cards were handed out helped up to evaluate the reach of our campaign.
JD Enterprises also calculated the amount of media impressions in order to evaluate the reach of the campaign. Additionally, it was important to evaluate the success of our media efforts by analyzing placement, context, length, etc.
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35 | P a g e We were able to evaluate interest in our event, based on the number of students who wrote down their email address to receive more information. This was done in two ways. The first was a simple sheet in which students supplied us with their contact information after hearing about what the Home Run Derby was. The second was through a raffle ticket that was used to auction off a free 20-person suite at a 2013 State College Spikes game. The amount of emails we received was used as an indicator of interest in the upcoming event, and can also be used for future public relations efforts regarding the Home Run Derby. Finally, JD Enterprises received a significant amount of feedback through informal discussions with students that attended our promotional event. These discussions took place both during and after the event. This will be discussed below as part of the results of our campaign.
Results
Goal: Because there is no set date for the Home Run Derby yet, our goal is to raise awareness of what Habitat for Humanity does and what the future Home Run Derby event will entail. Objective 1 Outcome: SUCCESS To increase attendance of our promotional event about Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County and the on-campus affiliate by 200 students by November 12, 2012.
According to our analysis and measurement of media placement and coverage, we made a total of 30,000 media impressions. The number of impressions made just as important as the audience that was reached. These impressions came from the five-minute slot we had on the B94.5 Morning Zoo radio show.
During our promotional event in the HUB we passed out 384 informational baseball cards. The baseball cards had Habitat for Humanity facts, or statistics on the back of them, and can be found in Appendix B. This exceeds the 200 that we had hoped to pass out, and doesnt take into account the number of students who simply walked by and saw the signs and banners hanging from our event tables.
One of the main reasons for the success of this objective was our location. Our event was held in the HUB from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Monday, November 12. We had two tables set up on the ground floor, right at the end of the main stairwell. This allowed for us to have a prime location at the busiest time in the HUB. Therefore we could reach a large number of students. Our first strategy for this objective was to create a social media campaign to promote the Habitat for Humanity informational event and the Home Run Derby during Hunger and Homeless Awareness Week. Upon further consideration, we decided that it would benefit Habitat more to create a social media plan that they can use to promote the derby as well as inform people about the organization. This can be found in Appendix B.
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Objective 2 Outcome: PARTIAL SUCCESS To establish positive attitudes about Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County and the Home Run Derby by 50 students before November 30, 2012. Our strategy for this objective was to hold a promotional event in the HUB that promoted the Home Run Derby, as well as inform people about Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County.
Our second strategy for this objective was to utilize traditional media outlets to promote the Habitat for Humanity informational event and the Home Run Derby during Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. We were able to receive a five-minute slot on the B94.5 Morning Zoo radio show. B94.5 is one of the most popular radio stations in town for Penn State students, especially because it plays todays hit music. We went on the show the morning of our promotional event in order to get the word out, as well as teach listeners about Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County. Although we didnt receive coverage from these outlets, we did send out press releases and fact sheets to the Daily Collegian and Onward State.
Due to time restraints, we were not able to survey the students that attended our event. We did, however, have informal discussions with some of the students. Some viewpoints are expressed in the bullets below. I really had no idea that Habitat doesnt just hand out houses to people. I thought they were free, and I think its great that people have to work for them. It makes me look at Habitat in a whole new light. Anne Whitesell
Objective 3 Outcome: SUCCESS To create a listserv with 50 students who show interest in finding out more information about the derby by November 16, 2012.
(In reference to informational baseball cards) This definitely taught me more about Habitat and helped me clear up some misconceptions. It seems like a great organization. Kelly Brown
I think the Home Run Derby is a great way to raise funds for Habitat. Itll definitely draw in Greek life, and Im sure a lot of guys will want to sign up since they like baseball. Kristen Miller
We exceeded this objective by creating a listserv with a total of 99 Penn State student email addresses. This was done in two ways. The first was a simple sheet in which students supplied us with their contact information after hearing about what the Home JD ENTERPRISES
37 | P a g e Run Derby was. The second was through a raffle ticket that was used to auction off a free 20 person suite at a 2013 State College Spikes game.
Our strategy for this objective was to make certain that our informational event was memorable and creates a long lasting positive impression of Habitat for Humanity to ensure that students will sign up for the derby. We did this by making sure that our event stood out and created a fun, exciting environment for students. At our event we had music, large colorful signs, free baseball cupcakes and candy. There was a wheel that students could spin that would dictate how many times they could enter the drawing for a free 20 person suite at a 2013 State College Spikes Game. There were giveaways including pens, pins, Spikes pennants (some signed by the mascot, Ike the Spike), coffee mugs, a Habitat for Humanity laptop case, and other Habitat for Humanity and Spikes related goodies. Ike the Spike also made an appearance at our event from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. He interacted with students as well as passed out our informational baseball cards.
In order to express gratitude toward the students who participated in our event and signed up for more information about the derby, we strongly urge Habitat to send a thank you email as soon as the campaign ends. In this thank you email a general overview of the organization should be given for those who are not aware of Habitats mission. The organization should also let the members of the listserv know that they will be in contact soon with more information about the derby. This email should also include the winner of the Spikes suite so that participants know who won the raffle.
Maintaining the relationship between Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County and our campaigns target audience should be fairly easy. At our promotional event, JD Enterprises created a listserv of email addresses including students who were interested in participating in the Home Run Derby, as well as students who were interested in Habitat for Humanity. Emails should be sent to this listserv periodically to keep students up-to-date with current Habitat and derby information. The sample social media posts we have provided in Appendix B should be utilized on both Facebook and Twitter in order to reach more students and keep the current students involved.
Stewardship Plan
To maintain the relationship between Habitat and the members of the newly created listserv, it is important that there are emails sent fairly often between the two groups. These emails can be as simple as sending updates on a current build or sharing a link of an interesting video that discusses Habitat related information. In order to prevent the loss of student attention to the organization, a continuous flow of communication is highly recommended. Considering that Penn State Students are going to play a key role in the success of the Home Run Derby, the loss of any interested member could be detrimental. It is imperative that this is prevented by keeping in constant contact with our target audience.
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Throughout our research phase, we successfully collected 120 responses to our survey that we distributed through a convenient sample. The information that we gained through this research was extremely helpful in guiding our team while creating a promotional event that would attract as many students as possible. Through this research, we discovered what type of giveaways attracted students the most as well as which media outlets students used to learn about on-campus events. Along with gaining an insight as to how we should create and plan our event, we also gained an extensive amount of information that Habitat for Humanity will be able to use when planning the derby in the spring. Information that will be helpful to the organization includes the price that students are willing to pay per person to participate in the derby, the season/semester that will attract the most students, media outlets that they follow the most and if they have current ties to campus activities, including Greek life and other on-campus organizations. All of this information was evaluated by our team and applied to our event. We also informed our contacts at Habitat for Humanity of our findings so that they could better start preparing for the Home Run Derby. During the planning phase, JD Enterprises set goals that we felt were reachable and that would help Habitat for Humanity in the long run with the planning of the derby in the spring. Although we felt that we could easily meet our clients expectations, we did not want to set our goals too high since we had limited resources available to us in our short time frame. For example, we set an objective to increase attendance of our promotional event about Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County and the on-campus affiliate by 200 students by the day of our event on November 12, 2012. Strategies for achieving this objective included reaching out to media outlets, like B94.5, in order to raise awareness for our event.
Overall, JD Enterprises felt that this campaign was an overall success. From the beginning of our research and planning, to the evaluation of the campaigns final product, we have found success to be awaiting us around every corner. The following are some highlights from our overall campaign:
During the implementation phase, we created a small, yet detailed timeline in order to keep the few weeks prior to our event as organized as possible. We also created a budget that included all of the items that we would need to make our event as attractive and successful as possible. During the evaluation and stewardship phase, we analyzed the overall success of our campaign. Ultimately, we found our efforts to be successful in many ways. We were able to distribute 384 flyers designed to look like baseball cards that included basic facts
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and information about Habitat for Humanity in a bright and appealing way. We were also able to achieve 30,000 media impressions through our five minute live interview with B94.5 on their morning show the day of the event. The only item that we considered to be a partial success was our second objective of establishing positive attitudes about Habitat for Humanity and the derby by 50 students. Due to time restraints, we were not able to measure this as well as we had hoped, but we were able to find out information from some of our attendees through informal conversation that we had throughout our event. Ultimately, JD Enterprises feels that we were successful in helping Habitat for Humanity throughout the semester in both creating and spreading awareness about the upcoming derby, as well as the organization overall. Our client couldnt stress more how important it was to raise awareness of the organization as a whole, and we ultimately feel successful in completing that request. However, with taking our suggestions that we have given for social media to the next level, we feel that Habitat will be successful in maintaining this relationship with interested students year round. This semester the public relations efforts of JD Enterprises has successfully taken Habitat one step closer to accomplishing its intended goal of better connecting to the students of Penn State University. We expect that our efforts and findings will be a tremendous help in the future to build and maintain this integral relationship.
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APPENDICES
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RESEARCH MATERIALS
Appendix A
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42 | P a g e Survey Questions Please circle your answer to the questions below: Are you involved in on campus activities?
Are you a member of Greek life at Penn State? Yes Did you know that there is a Penn State affiliate of Habitat for Humanity? Yes Do you know how to go about getting involved With Habitat for Humanity? Yes Do you know what Habitat for Humanity is? Yes
Yes
No No No
No No
Have you ever been affiliated with Habitat For Humanity in any way? Yes No If yes please explain: ______________________________________________________________________
Where do you learn about on campus activites (Check all that apply): ______ Classes _______ My campus groups ________ Mail _______ Flyers ______ Social Media _______ HUB ________ The Daily Collegian _______ Other If other, please explain: _________________________________________________________________ Thank You for your time and responses! Gender: Male Female Age: ________ Semester Standing: __________
Which of these giveaways would entice you to come to a promotional event the most? (Rank in order of 1-4) ______ T-shirts ______ Food _____Tickets ______ Prizes Other: ___________________________________________________________________________________
How much money would you be willing to pay to participate in a Home Run Derby? _____ Under $10 ______ $11 -15 _______ $ 16-20 ________ $21-25 _______ Over $25
What season do you think would be the best to hold a Home Run Derby? Winter Spring Summer Fall
On a scale of 1 -7, how interested would you be in participating in a Home Run Derby? (1 = not interested at all, 7= Very interested sign me up now!) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County will be planning a Home Run Derby as a fundraiser. A Home Run Derby is a team event in which members score points by hitting a baseball as far as they can.
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Research Questions
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. What do Penn State students know about Habitat for Humanity? What do Penn State want to know about Habitat for Humanity? Why/ why wouldnt Penn State students want to participate in a Home Run Derby? What would get students excited about participating in a Home Run Derby? What would be the best time to hold a Home Run Derby (season/time of day/ etc.) What would be the best place and time to hold a separate promotional event? What types of prizes and giveaways draw in the most Penn State students to an event? What types of informational handouts catch Penn State students attention the best? Introduction
Purpose: Thanks for joining our group today. Our purpose today is to hear your thoughts on our topic of Habitat for Humanity and a Home Run Derby that Habitat is planning on doing as a fundraiser. Well talk for about an hour, and your thoughts are very much appreciated. Disclosure: Audio Taping Answers will be used in a research report (anonymously) Observers taking notes
Participant Introductions: Name Year at Penn State What on campus groups each are involved in
Procedure: No right or wrong answers. We just want to hear your opinions. Be honest. We want to know what you really think. We want to hear from everyone. No need to raise your hand, but one person talks at a time
B) Show of hands: How many people know that there is a Penn State affiliate of Habitat for Humanity?
A) Show of hands: How many people know what Habitat for Humanity is? - Can someone explain what they think Habitat is?
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44 | P a g e - Do you know what they do within the organization from Penn State?
C) Explain what Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County does within the community - Is that what participants thought Habitat did in this community? - How do you feel about Habitat now that you know this? --What do Penn State students want to know about Habitat? A) After learning more about Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County, what else would you want to know? - Why?
B) What are the aspects of Habitat of Greater Centre County that you think Penn State students would be most interested to learn about? - Why? Section 2: Home Run Derby
--Why/ why wouldnt Penn State students want to participate in a Home Run Derby? A) Do you know what a Home Run Derby is? - If yes, have them explain - If no, moderator explains to group - Explain purpose of Home Run Derby is a fundraiser - Explain location of Derby is Medlar Field at Lubrano Park
B) Do you think a Home Run Derby is something Penn State students would be interested in participating in? - Why/why not? - What specific groups of students do you think would be most interested? --What would get students excited about participating in a Home Run Derby? A) What do you think would entice students to participate? - Why?
B) What would be the best prize for the winning team? - What would be the best prizes for the runners up? - Why do you think these would make students want to participate? JD ENTERPRISES
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A) What would be the best season to hold the Derby? - Why? - Month?
B) What would be the best day of the week to hold the Derby? - When are most students available to participate? - Why? C) What would be the best time of day to hold the Derby? - Why? - How could the time of day add to the atmosphere?
--What would be the best time to hold a separate promotional event? A) Where would be the best place to hold a promotional event? - Why? - How could this help us reach the most students? - Explain purpose of a separate promotional event
B) What time of day would be best to hold a promotional event? - Why? - How could this help us reach the most students?
C) What would be the best day of the week to hold a promotional event? - Why? - How could this help us reach the most students? --What types of prizes and giveaways draw in the most Penn State students to an event?
A) What types of prizes and giveaways have you seen at promotional events that made you interested in participating or signing up for something? - Why did these interest you?
B) What types of prizes and giveaways have you seen at promotional events that didnt entice you at all to participate or sign up for something? - Why didnt these interest you? JD ENTERPRISES
46 | P a g e C) What type of prizes and giveaways havent you seen or had experience with before that you think Penn State students would be interested in? - Why? A) What types of flyers or informational handouts that you have received have caught your attention and not made you throw them out right away? - Why? - What specific things caught your eye?
--What types of informational handouts catch Penn State students attention the best?
B) What makes you throw out the flyers that you receive?
C) If we gave some type of small giveaway to each student that took a flyer do you think that would make them actually read what was on it? - Why/why not? Does anyone else have anything they want to say? Thank participants for their help and remind them that theyre responses were very helpful to us. Conclusion
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MEDIA KIT
Appendix B
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contacts: Rebecca Szwak Media Contact [email protected] (201) 230-7586 Missy Schoonover Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County Interim Executive Director [email protected] (814) 571-0509
Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County to announce inaugural Home Run Derby
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County will be holding an informational event in Penn States HUB-Robeson Center on Monday November 12, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The event will take place on the ground floor of the HUB at the bottom of the first floor stairs. The event will focus on informing Penn State students about what Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County does for the community, as well as how students can get involved. It will also serve as an announcement and promotion of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre Countys inaugural Home Run Derby.
The Nov. 12 informational HUB event will include games, prizes, food, and giveaways for interested students. It will also be held in conjunction with the Penn State chapter of Habitat for Humanity, who will be educating students on Homelessness and Hunger Awareness Week.
Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County is an ecumenical Christian housing ministry. Habitat welcomes all people regardless of race, religion, ethnicity or any other difference to build simple, decent and affordable houses with those who lack adequate shelter. For more information, or to donate or volunteer visit www.habitatgcc.org, or follow us at http://www.facebook.com/Habitat-For-Humanity-Of-Greater-Centre-County or on Twitter, @HabitatGCC. ###
The Home Run Derby will serve as a fundraiser for Habitat, and will take place this coming Spring in Medlar Field at Lubrano Park. Medlar Field is home to the Penn State baseball team, as well as the minor league State College Spikes. At the Nov. 12 HUB event, Habitat will announce the date of the Derby as well as have giveaways for those who sign up to receive more information about the Derby.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contacts: Missy Schoonover Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County (814) 571-0509 [email protected]
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contacts: Missy Schoonover Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County (814) 571-0509 [email protected]
WHAT:
Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County (HFHGCC) will host an informational event for students with food, prizes, giveaways and games. Students will have the opportunity to learn about what HFHGCC and the Penn State affiliate do, as well as information about how to get involved with the organization. Information about the upcoming Home Run Derby will also be given out to interested students. Monday, November 12th 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Ground Floor of the HUB Roberson Center Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County is an ecumenical Christian housing ministry. Habitat welcomes all people regardless of race, religion, ethnicity or any other difference to build simple, decent and affordable houses with those who lack adequate shelter. For more information, or to donate or volunteer visit www.habitatgcc.org. ###
WHEN:
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NOVEMBER NEWSLETTER
Something that Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County has been trying to do for a while now is expand and appeal to the Penn State student body. With such a prominent presence in the State College community, we feel students would really help spread our message and launch our mission into full effect.
To help achieve this, we held an informational event for Penn State students this month to help raise awareness of our cause and also to help promote our upcoming homerun derby. The event included games, Habitat for Humanity giveaways and free baked goods for students passing by who showed an interest in Habitat. The event focused on getting Penn State students more informed and excited about what Habitat really does. Baseball-type cards containing basic facts about Habitat were distributed to students in the HUB who passed by. In concurrence with the event in the HUB downstairs, an informational table was set up by Penn States Habitat for Humanity chapter to help direct traffic downstairs, and also make students aware of Habitats presence on campus.
The State College Spikes mascot also appeared at the event to help get students to sign up for our upcoming homerun derby in the spring. The derby will be an event that will garner a lot of student traffic and hopefully help get students excited about possibly joining Habitat and contributing to our mission. In the months to come, look out for more information about the homerun derby and other exciting events Habitat has planned.
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Contacts:
Julianne Legath Media Director (814) 242-5519 [email protected] Missy Schoonover Interim Executive Director of Habitat for Humanity (814) 571-0509 [email protected]
Fact Sheet
Mission Statement: Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County works in partnership with God and our communities to build simple, decent, affordable houses for qualified families in need of adequate shelter. Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County provides A Handup... Not a Handout History: Habitat for Humanity started in 1976 in Americus, Georgia by Millard Fuller and his wife Linda. Tri-County Habitat for Humanity began on October 27, 1983 by Robert Olsen, Jon Grindall and Dave Miller, all members of the University Baptist and Brethren Church. Habitat for Humanity has 1500 independent affiliates of Habitat for Humanity International.
-Habitat for Humanity offers homeownership opportunities to families who are unable to obtain conventional house financing. Generally, this includes those whose income is 40 to 60 percent of the area's median income.
Facts: Habitat for Humanity is able to construct these homes for families because: houses are sold through a no-profit, no-interest mortgage; individuals, corporations and volunteers provide financial support; homeowners and volunteers build the houses themselves.
Purpose: Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County is a nonprofit, Christian housing ministry. The organization welcomes all people regardless of race, religion or ethnicity. Habitats mission is to build simple and affordable houses for those who lack adequate shelter.
-Habitat builds houses in partnership with those in need regardless of race, religion or any other difference. Prospective homeowners must meet three criteria: need; ability to repay the mortgage; and a willingness to partner with Habitat. -While some Habitat homeowners receive aid, many more are working people. Typically their annual income is less than half the local median income in their community. Contact Information: Missy Schoonover, Interim Executive Director of Habitat for Humanity, (814) 571-0509 Will West, Board Member of Habitat for Humanity, (814) 353-2390 JD ENTERPRISES
-In most cases, prospective Habitat homeowner families make a $500 down payment. Additionally, they contribute 350 to 500 hours of "sweat equity" on the construction of their home or someone else's home. Because Habitat houses are built using donations of land, material and labor, mortgage payments are kept affordable.
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Springs just around the corner & that means 2 of our favorite things: Habitat & Home Run Derby? What are your favorite things about spring? Be sure to sign up for the #Habitat4Humanity Home Run Derby! Details coming soon! Did you know that 18.5% of people living in Centre County live below poverty level? Thats 6% more than in all of Pennsylvania. #FactFriday Were starting to build! Retweet to wish the (insert name) Family a happy life in their new home! Want to get involved? Go to (insert URL) to see how you can be a part of #Habitat4Humanity! Check out our newest video to learn more about what #Habitat4Humanity REALLY does! (insert link to video) The date for our first annual Home Run Derby has been announced! Check out all the details here (insert URL) Retweet this if youre excited to play baseball in the Spikes stadium as a way to fundraise for #Habitat4Humanity! #ReStore is a great place to find good deals, all while supporting Habitat! Find out more here: (insert link) Know a family that could benefit from Habitats help? Show them how we can be there to support them (insert link) Help us hit homelessness out of the park! Sign up for the Home Run Derby today & score a free t-shirt! #Habitat4Humanity Habitat is looking for some home run hot-shots. Think you got what it takes? Sign up for the derby today! Ike is looking for some competition. Support Habitat & sign up for the Home Run Derby! Ike is waiting. #Habitat4Humanity (insert photo of Ike) Habitat for Humanity is looking for some home run hitters to help us knock homelessness out of the park! Sign up to help today! Put the HOME in Home Run and sign up for Habitat for Humanitys Home Run Derby! Habitat For Humanity of the Greater Centre County appreciates any small donations! Every penny really does count. Please donate today! #Habitat4Humanity Habitat for Humanity of the Greater Centre County is looking for more Penn State student volunteers! Please donate your time and effort into this great cause! Habitat For Humanity of the Greater Centre County actively embraces Habitat's goal of eliminating poverty housing from the world. Homelessness DOES exist in Centre County, so please help! #Habitat4Humanity Enjoy Baseball? Enjoy helping a good cause? Sign up for the Home Run Derby today & help support Habitat for Humanity. Habitat for Humanity is hitting homelessness out of the park. This spring a Home Run Derby will be hosted at Medlar Field in Lubrano Park in support of Habitat for Humanity! #signupnow
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This Monday were focusing on memories. What are some of your favorite memories from being a part of Habitat for Humanity? We just posted a new photo album of one of our new build sites! Take a look! Be sure to tag everyone who appears in these photos so the pictures can be displayed on their Facebook pages. What could be better than baseball in spring time? Habitat for Humanity has them both this spring! Sign up for the Home Run Derby to help support your local Habitat for Humanity! (insert URL) Here at Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County, were all about helping out within our community. Post your favorite picture of you in your community with a small description for a chance to win some HFHGCC gear! Not sure exactly what Habitat does? Take a look at this video! (Post video) Keep a look out for Ike the Spike downtown in State College today! Hes letting everyone know about the upcoming Habitat for Humanity Home Run Derby! Did you know that in addition to Housewalk well be holding another fundraising event at Medlar Field at Lubrano Park this spring? Like this post if youre excited about the chance to play baseball on the Spikes field in our first annual Home Run Derby! Are you in desperate need of a quick gift for someone? How about a cheap way to spruce up your house? Then ReStore is right for you! Its a great way to support Habitat, while getting cool stuff and not hurting your wallet. (Post picture and link with more info.) Like this post to wish the (insert name) family a wonderful life in their new Habitat home! Who likes baseball? Who likes hitting home runs? Who likes WINNING? If you answered yes to any of these then we are looking for you! Sign up for the Home Run Derby to compete, support Habitat & have some fun! Think you have the baseball skills of Babe Ruth? Prove it & sign up for the Home Run Derby! Step up to the plate & take a swing at supporting your local Habitat for Humanity chapter! Were hosting a Home Run Derby in the spring & want YOU to be a part of the fun! :) Like baseball AND helping those in need? Sign up for the Habitat for Humanity Home Run Derby and help us knock homelessness out the park! We put the HOME in Home Run here at Habitat for Humanity. Join us for the Spring Home Run Derby at Lubrano Park! How do Habitat affiliates accomplish what they do? Hard work and a lot of faith! This holiday season please donate to your local Habitat for Humanity affiliate! Every contribution helps! On average, every 5.5 minutes a family is helped by Habitat for Humanity. To learn more about this record-breaking year in eliminating poverty housing, please visit http://bit.ly/Ud1osy. Habitat is a life-changing force; both for the partner families that become homeowners and for the volunteers and supporters who help make it happen. Learn more about Why We Build in this very special issue of Habitat World. I know winter break is quickly approaching, but keep in mind Habitat for Humanity is hosting a Home Run Derby in the Spring. Practice that swing, and gear up for a great night, all while helping a great cause! Please sign up today! Become a Habitat Champion today and help make a difference from anywhere around the world. Find out how by visiting: http://bit.ly/Pynkmi. Habitat for Humanity of Centre County would love any help! Take the pledge! This World Habitat Day, take the Pledge to End Poverty Housing and help us highlight the need for safe, decent, affordable housing. http://bit.ly/QEStAs. Habitat for Humanity of the Greater Centre County embraces Habitat's goal of eliminating poverty housing from the world.
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Appendix C
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19%
81%
35%
Yes No 54%
46%
Yes No
65%
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Do you know what Habitat for Humanity is? (Participants interested in Derby)
7% Yes No 93%
40% 60%
No
46% 54%
Yes No
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Know how to go about getting involved with Habitat? (Participants interested in Derby)
Have you even been affiliated with Habitat for Humanity in any way? (All participants)
Yes No
Have you even been affiliated with Habitat for Humanity in any way? (Participants interested in derby)
Yes No 11%
22%
78%
89%
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On a scale of 1-7, how interested would you be in participating in a Home Run Derby? (1 = not interested at all, 7 = Very interested sign me up now! (All participants)
1 2 3 7% 3% 21% 20% 16% 17% 16% 4 5 6 7
On a scale of 1-7, how interested would you be in participating in a Home Run Derby? (1 = not interested at all, 7 = Very interested (Participants interested in derby)
4 5 6 7 7% 0% 16% 43% 34%
What season do you think would be the best to hold a Home Run Derby? (Participants interested in derby)
Winter 11% 78% Spring Summer Fall 11% 0%
What season do you think would be the best to hold a Home Run Derby? (All participants)
Winter Spring 0% 7% 18% 75% Summer Fall
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How much money would you be willing to pay to participate in a Home Run Derby? (All participants)
Under $10 $21-25 7% $11-15 Over $25 2% 0% $16-20
Which of these giveaways would entice you to come to a promotional event the most? (All participants)
T-shirts Food Tickets Prizes
38%
33%
58%
Which of these giveaways would entice you to come to a promotional event the most? (Participants interested in derby)
T-shirts Food Tickets Prizes
How much money would you be willing to pay to participate in a Home Run Derby? (Participants interested in Derby)
Under $10 $21-25 9% $11-15 Over $25 3% 0% $16-20
45%
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Male Female
41.60% 55.80%
Male Female
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39.30%
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Classes Campus Groups Mail Flyers Social Media HUB Collegian Other
21.70%
45%
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21.40%
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EVENT RESULTS
Appendix D
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Event Photos
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Ben Sepe Hannah Matos Dom Allen Nicole Miller Lindsay Faust Anne Whitesell Ari Kapner Kelly Hughes Chelsea Slavin Tiffany Wahl
No No No No No Yes Yes No No No No No No No No
Tara Perpignan [email protected] Summer Warner Amie Schlitzer Gina Gonnella Colleen Milliron [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
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Jada Walton Diane Kearney Tahlie Zoe Angie Galofre Samantha Shewan Angelique Murillo Laurel Greel Sabrina Rodrigues Sonia Reed Abby Zavko Rima Naik Michelle Kehs Tom Sperlich Sarah Rojas Maggie Quinn Megan Dutill
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No
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Taylor Guthrie Nicolette Orji Kyle Nicholson Leshae Daniel Stephanie Ofordire Garry Gilliam
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No
Emily McKenna [email protected] Kim Schmohl Kyle Freeman Ben Bianco Eric Buggy Julian Joseph Gwen Chodur Chris Carroll Bre Robinsen Brooke Daris [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
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Amanda Cillo Devan Hribal Emily Gibson Brenna Saupp Sammi Stoltztus Orent Paddy Lauren Tobin Aurielle Chaplin Ari Sobel Samantha Narick
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No
Yes No No No No No No No No No No No Yes No No No
Rachel Fairman [email protected] Marianna Saucier Clare Ho Sarah Appleman Ashley Bemis Tabitha Ahn [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
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Morgan Lingle Rachel Cordon Alexandra Koszarek Tanya Roberts Christine Snyder
Yes Yes No
Yes No No No No
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SOURCES
Appendix E
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75 | P a g e Background Research Sources "About Us." Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County PA |. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Oct. 2012. <http://www.habitatgcc.org/>. "Marketing Report 2010-2011." The Daily Collegian Online. The Daily Collegian, Jan. 2011. Web. 25 Oct. 2012. <http://www.collegian.psu.edu/default.aspx>. "About Us." Onward State. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Oct. 2012. <http://onwardstate.com/about/>.
Schoonover, Missy, and Will West. "Habitat for Humanity Client Meeting." Personal interview. 16 Oct. 2012.
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We the undersigned have thoroughly reviewed this project. We certify that it is original work (or attributed to the proper sources). Mary Smurkowski
Account Manager
Rebecca Szwak
Media Director
Julianne Legath
Media Director
Juliana Lustig
Creative Director
Kelsey Flatau
Copy Editor
Chelsea Vielhauer
Research Director
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