Professional Documents
Culture Documents
PR Campaign Book Final
PR Campaign Book Final
Ashley Johnston, Andrew Baldacci, Olivia Hix, Sheriden Osei & Madison Lotano
Executive Summary
This report will detail our team’s plan to help the non-profit organization SOAR365’s
current communication problem. Through research of the company, we have learned that 35% of
their staff members do not have access to email, which makes it difficult to send them necessary
company information. We have created a two month plan starting on March 1st, 2022 that will
implement our objectives, strategies, and tactics into their company in a successful way by April
30th, 2022. To guide us throughout the campaign, we created the communication goal of making
SOAR365’s employee information more accessible to the staff. Everything implemented was
made with this goal in mind. This started with our objectives, which include increasing
awareness of new information resources for all employees by 75%, making this information
more accessible to 100 employees, and having the company engage with the staff by 75% more.
This report will go into more depth on how we plan to accomplish these goals through strategies
and tactics, as well as what needs to happen for them to be successful. We have provided a visual
tree and a calendar that detail our overall goals for the campaign and our day-to-day plans for the
two month cycle. Throughout the entire campaign, we will be evaluating the success of our plans
to gain a deeper understanding on why things meet or do not meet our expectations. After the
campaign, we hope to leave SOAR365 a better and more efficient organization with a better
SOAR365 has an internal communications issue, in which a majority of the staff does not
have access to email. Most of how SOAR365 communicates with their employees is through
email, so it presents the situation of finding and creating a plan to help reach these internal
audiences. To provide some background, 35% of staff members don’t have access to email,
presumptuously due to the nature of their job. SOAR365 is a very hands-on non-profit
organization, so many of them may not complete a lot of their work on a computer, which could
be the reason why staff can’t be reached by company email. Many of the internal audiences
receive their information from word of mouth and/or bulletin boards posted in lunchrooms. This
has become a major problem for SOAR365 because it’s affected the retention of important
families in 1954. This organization specializes in providing services for families and individuals
that are affected by the challenges of living with a disability daily. There are many programs
designed to help those of any demographic; these programs include children & youth programs,
adult programs, summer camp, pediatric therapy, PARK 365, etc. SOAR365 prides itself on its
ability to provide life-fulfilling opportunities for individuals with disabilities, per their mission
statement. The employees of this organization are highly trained and have tons of experience.
SOAR365 is a program that serves individuals with disabilities which gives them
different audiences in certain situations. The primary audience in this campaign is the employees
at SOAR365. As Soar365 explains in their mission, their programs are designed for individuals
with a wide range of disabilities. This requires SOAR365 to employ many differently skilled
individuals to keep the organization going. The employees are significant to the organization
because they care for the individuals with disabilities which is why SOAR365 is successful. The
employees at this organization are there for support not only for the individual with a disability
but also the families. This is a great aspect for them to have since families are typically the ones
searching for extra help and care for their loved ones. The secondary audience in this campaign
is people in the community that know about SOAR365. This organization may have secondary
audiences if someone is looking to get information for someone else about the program. Many
people may be interested in what SOAR365 does and how they help those with disabilities even
if they are not directly affected or involved. It is important to target the secondary audience at
Two ways primary research approaches can be useful in this situation are with surveys
and observation. For SOAR365, reaching their internal audience can be difficult due to certain
circumstances but can be better understood using these types of approaches. Surveys can be
given to the staff which can provide information about what resources each person has access to
and how information can be more easily accessed. This can help the organization know what
they can do in the future to allow them to succeed. Observations can also be a good way to
understand what information is known throughout the organization and what needs to be better
communicated. Gathering data through observation allows the organization to look at human
behavior which can be recorded to make a better plan for communication to staff in the future.
SWOT & Situational Analysis:
Strengths Weaknesses
● SOAR365 programs are specific to ● 35% of the staff doesn’t have access to
different age groups. email, which is SOAR365’s main
● Volunteer opportunities are available as communication source
well as community outreach programs ● Employees rely on bulletin boards for
● PARK365 was voted the 3rd best employee information rather than a wide
playground in the central Virginia region variety of media channels to reach out to
in 2021. employees.
● SOAR365 receives strong funding from ● Currently, only one location in central
both the federal and state government Virginia.
($5.5 million). ● Current lack of adequate social media
● 90% of their funds go towards programs exposure to expand SOAR365’s network
to help better their organization and and bring more volunteers and
assist the community. employees in.
● Skilled and experienced staff that are ● Employees have difficulty retaining
able to accommodate children with messages in order to achieve company
disabilities needs fluidity and ensure that everyone
● Many spirited volunteers and active receives important information.
donors that are good for promoting
through word of mouth
● Use of social media channels that
promote SOAR365’s causes and
programs
Opportunities Threats
● 147,832 people in Central Virginia have ● Schools located in Virginia who use
a disability, meaning that 12% of the disability programs may undermine the
population could potentially benefit from importance of SOAR365 programs.
SOAR365's programs ● COVID-19 shutdown several of their
● Could work with a local charity to raise programs and limited the amount of
awareness about a specific disability, face-to-face interactions.
such as throwing a gala event ● Disagreements within the government
about how to allocate funds properly.
● Unemployment rates in our country ● Less people are likely to volunteer due to
allow for more people in SOAR365's the threat of COVID affecting their
Business Solutions to get hired for jobs decision of helping out in person.
● Could get celebrity/politician ● Arc is now an unacceptable word to use
endorsements to gain more traction on within this industry field.
social media channels
● Will likely receive more donations for
SOAR365 because there are more
employees entering the workforce since
COVID
Our main communication goal for this non-profit organization is to make SOAR365’s
employee information more accessible to staff. According to the Barcelona Principles 3.0, setting
wanted our goal to reflect the organization’s values, while addressing a more immediate problem.
This communication goal gives us the opportunity to help SOAR365 understand why our efforts
are needed in this communication plan, as well as what we want to accomplish moving forward.
James and Larissa Grunig write that, “The goal-attainment approach holds that organizations are
effective when they meet their goals.” We believed setting goals that are obtainable for the
organization was an important step to ensuring that SOAR365 can reach their full potential as a
company..There are three objectives that further explain what we would like to accomplish for
this non-profit. Our first objective is to expand awareness of new information resources to
SOAR365 employees by 75% by April 30th, 2022. SOAR365 is undergoing a struggle with their
internal communications, making it difficult for them to relay information to staff members. It’s
ultimately affected the organization’s retention of information as a whole. Our second objective
is to increase accessibility of new SOAR 365 information to 100 employees by April 30th, 2022.
By increasing the accessibility of new information, SOAR365 would seemingly increase the
word of mouth and bulletin boards for company information, the strategies and tactics used to
implement this objective would allow employees to be reached by SOAR365’s messages. Our
last objective for our communication goal is to increase engagement with SOAR365 employees
by 75% by April 30th, 2022. Employee engagement is extremely important, especially when
dealing with a non-profit organization such as SOAR365. This will help increase company
morale, boost productivity, and improve work quality, all of which would benefit the way
SOAR365 communicates with their employees. For this campaign, we wanted to ensure that our
goal was broader, while keeping our objectives far more attainable and specific.
75% on April 30th of 2022. By holding mandatory meetings once a week for all employees and/
or volunteers, each person will be told the new information for that upcoming week during that
time. This tactic will allow the employees and/ or volunteers to become more aware of the
information since they will all be hearing it together and not relying on the information just to be
seen or trickled down. This tactic is, also, more reliable since it will be advised by the person in
charge so everyone is hearing the information directly from the source. Another tactic to support
the strategy of providing information to employees through meetings would be to hold a meeting
between shift changes. These meetings would consist of the shift leader and/ or manager along
with a small group of workers and/ or volunteers who are coming into their shift at SOAR365. In
these meetings the leader would address any new information that the employees and/ or
volunteers may need to know along with a small run down of the day or anything that may be
considered important. This tactic will allow everyone to be on the same page each day that they
come into SOAR365 and for things to run more smoothly in the environment. In doing this each
day, it would ultimately increase the awareness of new information to SOAR365 employees.
through controlled media, it will increase accessibility of new SOAR 365 information to 100
employees by April 30th, 2022. Strategic communication, according to Shayna Englin, entails
"communicating the best message, through the right channels, against well-considered
strategic as possible while formulating our campaign in order to properly target our audience and
achieve our objectives. Because the email option isn't working for SOAR365, it's crucial to think
about other media channels that can be more effective with the audience. Because SOAR365 has
an older workforce working for them, it may be far more effective for them to rely on controlled
media. This controlled media consists of paper being handed out by the company to its
employees. By giving out daily handouts to each employee that they are required to sign off on,
will allow us to increase the accessibility of information to employees. The sign off will prove
that the employee has received this information to ensure everyone in the company is receiving
the vital information. This hand out could even be something like a handwritten post- it note to
save the company money, since it is something that requires paper to be used every day. If the
employee is coming in frequently then they probably won’t even need more than a sticky note to
refresh the information or learn new information for that day. Another tactic that could be more
cost efficient would be the act of sending newsletters home with the employee’s paychecks.
These newsletters would educate each person of the new changes or important information that
they would need to know for the next two weeks, until they receive their next paycheck. In doing
this, the employee would also have the ability to refer back to the formal letter throughout the
next two weeks. In using these tactics it would be possible to employ the strategy of
communicating to employees through controlled media which would further increase the
are being heard will allow for an increase of engagement with the employees by 75% on April
30th, 2022. This two-way communication will be conducted through more of a paper and
face-to-face interaction due to the lack of internet access among current employees. By providing
a drop-box with pens and paper, the employees and/ or volunteers can voice their questions and/
or concerns. The drop-box will be accessible to everyone in a relative area that is easy for them
to approach. The people can write anonymously if wished, too. This tactic will make sure that
everyone in the company is satisfied with how things are doing even if they don’t feel
comfortable enough to say something in person, or even if a supervisor is just not present at that
time. By allowing the people in the company to voice their opinions in the drop-box it will allow
an increase of engagement among the SOAR365 employees and their company. Another tactic
that could ensure two-way communication to make sure the employees are being heard, is
conducting surveys for the employees to take that asks for their overall opinion regarding the
current company’s communication infrastructure. In doing this, the employees could suggest any
changes that need to be made for a more clear and positive communication. This could be more
costly than the other tactic that supports this strategy but it would allow for change to occur more
quickly and that change could make for a more positive work environment. Both of these tactics
will allow for the strategy to be more successful and avoid any urgent situations between a
member of their company’s team. Urgency is “when that relationship or claim is important or
company, who is also the stakeholder. In allowing the employees to voice their opinions they are
Demonstrative Tactic
Visual Planning Tree
Message Strategy
For our message strategy, we have a primary message of helping SOAR365 communicate
its goal of communicating with the staff within the organization more efficiently. We want to
have more meetings instead of email communication to allow more people to know what is
going on within the organization. Less communication through technology and more face-to-face
meetings can help the staff succeed in what they do at Soar365. With these new communication
methods such as sending newsletters, giving handouts, and holding meetings, we can get closer
In this campaign we evaluated that many employees at SOAR365 did not have
accessibility to email. This caused a lot of issues with people knowing important information
which is why our primary message is so important. Giving the employees a voice with surveys
throughout this campaign can show the organization what ways communication has been
successful and what else needs to be communicated to them which also helps achieve the
primary message. Through the new communication methods the organization will become
stronger as a whole because employees will all have the same accessibility to information that
pertains to SOAR365.
because it helps narrow down what is important to SOAR365 and how it can be improved.
Secondary messages help give credibility to the primary messages which also help the end goal
other in the workplace. The secondary messages help give reasoning behind this main message.
Planning Calendar
March
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
-give daily handouts -give daily handouts -give daily handouts -give daily handouts -Open up notes from
-Hold meeting in between -Hold meeting in between -hold mandatory meeting on -Hold meeting in between shift dropbox.
shift changes shift changes new information changes -give daily handouts
-Hold meeting in between shift -Hold meeting in between
changes shift changes
30
-Send a newsletter with a
paycheck.
-give daily handouts
-Hold meeting in between
shift changes
Evaluation Plan
Our organizational goal for the campaign is to make SOAR365 more accessible as a
non-profit/human service agency. Before the campaign began, we evaluated that 35% of all
SOAR365 employees did not have access to email. This hindered employees from learning
information they needed to know. That is where we formed our communication goal to make
company information more accessible to the staff of SOAR365. To accomplish this, we set up
objectives including making employees more aware of company information, increasing the
company’s engagement with employees, and improving the accessibility of information. These
objectives will need to be evaluated through careful understanding of how successful our
strategies and tactics prove to be. We plan to evaluate before, frequently throughout, and after the
campaign. In her journal Demonstrating Effectiveness in Public Relations Goals, Objectives, and
Evaluation, Linda Childers Hon explains that,“Thus, through public relations evaluation,
practitioners can demonstrate either directly or indirectly public relations’ role in organizational
goal achievement.” This is what we plan to do through evaluation. We want to help achieve the
Before the campaign, we will evaluate certain measurables so that throughout the
campaign, we can get an estimate of how much we are improving towards our goal. Tom Watson
and Paul Noble write in their journal, Evaluating public relations: A best practice guide to public
relations planning, research & evaluation, that they believe, “Effective evaluation starts with
effective objective setting. At its simplest, PR evaluation is simply checking that objectives set
have been met.” We used this idea to set objectives that we believed we could accomplish and
measure to see if we were successful or not. First, we will evaluate how SOAR365 currently
communicates with employees and what means they use to do this. We will measure how many
employees are not getting all of the company information that they should be receiving. We also
want to ask employees if they believe their opinions are heard and valued at SOAR365. These
During the campaign, evaluation will occur to allow us to see our progress. Our first goal
is to increase employee awareness of new information resources by 75%. The tactics that make
this achievable include planned meetings and quick, less formal meetings between shifts.
Throughout the campaign, we plan to evaluate our progress every week by counting how many
employees are in attendance at the meetings and who received information between shift
changes. By evaluating, we will be able to see how many more employees are aware of new
company information than prior to the campaign. Our second objective is to increase the overall
through giving daily handouts and sending letters to employees. The letters will be sent home
with employee paychecks, so this will be evaluated every two weeks. For the daily handouts
employees will have to sign off whenever they receive it. This will allow us to understand how
many employees have gotten them and who specifically. Every week, we will look at the signing
sheets to determine how the objective is improving or failing. Our third objective is to increase
the company's engagement with employees by 75%. This will be done through surveys and
drop-boxes where employees can voice their concerns or praises. This objective will prove to be
very important in our evaluation because we can use the information gained from employees to
help us understand their opinions and how we can improve upon the other two objectives. The
drop-box will be open to employees all the time, but we will look through the messages at the
end of every week. Surveys will be given out every other week for employees to fill out. With
the information gained from these, we can properly evaluate during the campaign cycle to see
how employees feel about our efforts. If praises are given, we will understand what we are doing
correctly. If there are concerns and negative opinions, we will know what has to be changed in
the future.
After the campaign has ended, we will be able to look back on our work to see what we
accomplished. The evaluative measures taken during the campaign will help us tremendously
with this step, as we will have a general idea how we are doing before the ending. However, at
the end, we will be able to understand what went right and what went wrong. Our expectations
were to make SOAR365 a more effective company through new means of communication to
make information more accessible to employees. With the objectives set to help achieve these,
we will be able to measure our progress. We will learn which form of accessible communication
worked for SOAR365’s employees, whether that be meetings, paper handouts or both. We will
also now be able to properly engage with the employees and listen to their opinions on the
matters at hand. By evaluating how employees felt about changes, we will better understand
them and be able to use this knowledge for the future when implementing new campaigns.
REFERENCES
Anderson, F., Hadley, L., Rockland, D., & Weiner, M. (2009). Guidelines for Setting
https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/company-profiles.soar_365.3122465851c6364d
a4e8366126cc0699.html
Management and Strategic Management of Public Relations: Theory and Evidence from
https://doi.org/10.1080/14616700050028271
Objectives, and Evaluation. Journal of Public Relations Research, 10:2, 103-135, DOI:
10.1207/s1532754xjprr1002_02
www. Instituteforpr.orq
SOAR365. (2019). MISSION & HISTORY. Retrieved May 12, 2021, from
https://www.soar365.org/mission-history
Watson, T., & Noble, P. (2007). Evaluating public relations: A best practice guide to
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=4k0OCFKRlhAC&oi=fnd&pg=PP3&dq
=+public+relations+evaluation&ots=LaMSYOC2vw&sig=8cTNIEOj9z3KUBQ8jDcgcv
6olIE#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://amecorg.com/2020/07/barcelona-principles-3-0/