From expanding your reach and engagement to sharpening your message and tactics, our February CTIPP CAN call provided a step-by-step communications roadmap to maximize your time, reach, and impact on trauma-informed campaigns and initiatives.
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TRANSCRIPT
00:00:09That song and others. Welcome, everybody to the February 2024 CTIPP CAN call. I hope that you are all doing well. That song and other songs can be found on our Spotify playlist, um, which you can also find in addition to the, um, that link on the screen. I'm going to go ahead and put a lot of the links that we are going to be using today for today's call, but you can find the Spotify link if anybody would like to on, um, that in that bottom link as well. A few quick legislative updates. And then we're really excited for today's presentation. Um, on communication strategies. But we're just going to go through a few high-level legislative updates. Some of it will be review. And then we'll get into the communications roadmap. And then we'll go into breakout rooms and reflection activities. Uh, toward the end of the call, one quick update. We last October had Melinda Baldwin from the Inter-Agency Task Force report on their first five years, um, and what they did through their first authorization cycle. Uh, if we remember back, the, um. The Inter-Agency Task Force was authorized through the Support Act of 2018, and then this year, it lost its authorization, um, when the appropriations cycle during the continuing resolutions, it wasn't reauthorized. And so there are appropriations, um, available for the Inter-Agency Task force, but not an authorization for the task force itself to be operating currently. Very excitingly, next month, we expect for the Support Act reauthorization bill, which has been introduced on both the House and the Senate side, to be passed. We expect for that to happen in March. And so the Inter-Agency Task Force on Trauma Informed Care will be reauthorized when the reauthorization bill, along with other important elements and components of the Support act, when those are reauthorized. Uh, and we again, expect for that to happen next month, we will keep you all updated. The Inter-Agency Task Force will then be back in action. And we are very excited for phase two, which, again, Melinda covered a lot of back in October. Just wanted to give that quick update. And on the next slide, just as a reminder, we are continuing to mobilize around the rise from Trauma Act and the Community Mental Wellness and Resilience Act. The rise from Trauma Act has a number of important sections. Section 101 creates a new grant program for cross-sector community coalitions. There's a grant program to reduce hospital readmission rates, as well as other important provisions like training for frontline service providers. And then the Community Mental Wellness and Resilience Act fund cross-sector community coalitions to developing a public health approach to work upstream in advance of climate related disasters and other disasters that we are oftentimes so reactionary to, and instead is working to be more proactive, to build community capacity in a way that allows for us to develop the resources and skills and knowledge and connections that allow for us to rebuild from disaster more effectively and more efficiently. And so both of these bills are important, moving through Congress and bipartisan and bicameral ways. We will continue to stay on top of these. But in that QR code, if anybody wants to scan those in again, this link is also in the links that I send out, will continue to send out throughout this CTIPP CAN call. You can take quick action and reach out to your federal uh, senator and representative or senators and representative. To, uh, talk about why this bill is important to you. There are also other communication strategies within a toolkit social media. So that way you can share this with others as well. We hope to continue to build momentum around these before the end of this Congress. And so just wanted to go over those legislative updates very quickly. But that is not the main focus of the call. We have a wonderful call for you today that my wonderful colleague Laura Braden, who runs our communications efforts. A lot of times you you hear from Laura on the back end of emails and through our website and all of the wonderful work that she does, but today she will be front and center, getting to talk through the communications roadmap to help support all of the wonderful work that you do. And so, Laura, with that, I will turn it back over to you.
00:04:59Great. Thanks, Jesse, and welcome everyone. So glad to be with you today. Just one quick reminder. There is going to be time for questions at the end of the presentation, and I'm unable to do this and monitor the chat. So Jesse is going to be dropping links in the chat, as well as sort of keeping track of questions. So, um, you know, either drop it in the chat for later or just hold on to it until the end and we will get to it. So let's dive right in. So today we're talking about a communications roadmap. So this whole process is meant to be universal. So whether you're needing to create a new communications plan for an initiative or a donor campaign or a community outreach event, or whether you just need to audit or update existing plans, the process is roughly the same. So we're going to go step by step. I'm going to try to give as many examples and, um, sort of sample information as I can, as well as some tools to help you go about this process. And, um, you know, hopefully everyone finds that informative and helpful. And then we're going to do a breakout activity. We'll have a chance as a group to either discuss what you've found to work in your experience, or what common challenges you've encountered that you've had to deal with. Um, or, you know, if you've got an existing current need in communications, you know, bring it up to the group and maybe y'all can brainstorm some of these steps as a group. And then we'll come back and report, um, feedback from that. So step one defining success. So I always say every campaign this is like the number one thing for every campaign. You always when it comes to communications and marketing, you always want to define success first as specifically as possible and then work backwards to sort of engineer a strategy that hits the right messages, the right strategies and tactics to reach your targeted audiences. And I even take clients through a process where, like, you know, we sit down and get still and do some breaths and really visualize, like at the end of the day, what does success look like? And that can also sort of help cement it, because the more that you can define what success looks like, the more you're going to be able to maximize time, bandwidth and resources and, and and money and investment. And so it's really, really important, particularly if you're a smaller organization or have a smaller budget. So when we talk about success when it comes to communications, it can really be anything. It can be raising X amount of dollars for a new community center. It can be, um, you know, increasing awareness on a policy issue. It can be driving engagement on a particular call to action to your legislation. It can be anything. Um, and then you also want to sort of gut check are your goals for your campaign aligned with your mission, but also are they aligned with trauma informed principles? And we'll get into what that means here in a second. And I sort of suggest people do this throughout the process. But clearly on the first step, it's also a good time to start jotting down sort of like a resource and a Swot analysis. And Swot stands for strengths, weaknesses, Opportunities and threats. And essentially what it is is you're just thinking about your goal and coming up with a list of what resources do you already have to bear to achieve the goal and what is missing. And that way you can just have that information top of mind as you go through the following, uh, through the rest of the steps. So when we talk about trauma informed storytelling principles, we we really try to model the model here at CTIPP drive everything back to SAMHSA’s principles. And so here we've just sort of illustrated what this how this manifests itself in um in a storytelling format. So things like, you know, not framing the story, um, whether it's a blog post or a press release or whatever it is, but not framing the story around the heroes and or excuse me around the villains and instead focusing on the heroes. Right. Being sure that we're co-creating with folks involved with the story or mentioned in the story as much as possible. And also, of course, uplifting, diverse lived experiences is a very powerful tenet to that. And so, um, it's just a good sort of process to, with everything you do, kind of gut checking. Again, is it aligned with my mission and is it aligned in my modeling the model with the way I'm even going about with my communications? So then what I've done for each step the orange box throughout these slides. The orange box is the same example. The green box is a separate example. So I wanted to really sort of try to give like real life examples that might be common to things that you would want to build communications plans around. So the orange example is securing donations to expand a community program serving foster youth. We must raise $18,000 in six months to secure construction permits for an after school program. So very clear what needs to get done. Example two the green box pass AB 123, which mandates trauma informed education and training for teachers statewide. We have three months to educate the committee chair before a key vote. So very clear, very straightforward and pretty simple. So step two is really diving into okay, well who are the targeted audiences. Who do we actually it would be great to reach the entire community and the general public. But at the end of the day, who do we have to reach to move our ball across the line? The finish line. And so by really understanding who you're trying to reach, you also are able to create more personalized, um, messaging that can foster meaningful connections. It can drive engagement. It can really just sort of maximize the entire process. And what I always encourage folks is like, be as specific as possible when it comes down to demographics and geographics. And once you kind of have a framework of the types of people that you're trying to target, then you want to think about, well, where do they live online and also in the community and in real life. So online, how that could look is, you know, older folks, older generations tend to be on Facebook more than they're on Instagram. Right? Same thing in the community, older folks, although it is changing and it is dependent on your community, but older folks tend to still really value and support, um, local organizations like rotaries and local chambers of commerce. And so where do your audience is already exist? Because that's going to tell you where you need to drop in your communications, which we'll get to in a later step. And then another really important piece is segmenting out who and your targeted audiences are already current supporters and potential supporters, and that could look like the general public. So, you know, you're trying to go after, um, moms in your community, your caregivers in your community, or you're trying to go after particular legislators, but really sort of deciding, like, who already supportive of us, who's already educated on what we do and who we are and is supportive of us versus who do we need to educate to get them on board? Because you're going to the reason why that's so important is that your messaging and your tactics are going to vary slightly, right? You're not going to have to educate your current supporters as much as you might have to on your potential supporters. So it's going to switch up your messaging just a little bit, which is why I always suggest, um, including this step. Also, you could find out that like some of your current supporters live online or engage in the community in one way, whereas your potential supporters do differently. So again, it allows you to just create even more specific strategies, which is always so important. And then I also, you know, I also want to just take a pause and talk about amplification for a second. So part of identifying your audiences, I always tell folks like, yes, you need a media list to reach out to local media and industry publications, but you also really want to create a stakeholder email list as well. Um, stakeholders, partners, everyone in the community. That, again, is already sort of on board. They know who you are, they support the program. And um, and these are folks that it's just really important to keep them engaged on what you all are up to. Right? So whether that's news releases or newsletters, things like that, um, it's always important to create that list because it's they, they can be just as important as reaching the general public, because all of these folks have their own websites, their own newsletters, their own social media platforms. And I have always been slightly surprised by how often. Just a quick email asking folks to either amplify a piece of content on their website or hey, here's a tweet that we would love for you to retweet to reach your followers. They're more than happy to do it, particularly when it's already aligned with their mission, right? And you're willing to reciprocate when it aligns with your mission as well. Obviously, you should never feel like you have to post something on your social media feed that's not aligned with what you're doing. So, but where there's alignment, um, amplification can be a really powerful tool in reaching your target audiences. So in this case, so the orange team has decided that the small business community is actually a super untapped segment of their donor outreach. Um, the small business community in their town are most active on Facebook and likely consume news from a local business journal and a business talk radio show. And I, you know, most midsize to large size are going to have those sorts of segments, right? Less so on the on the, um, on the like smaller community front. So we can tweak that, um, accordingly if you've got a different situation happening in your town. Um, and then the green team, their target is one person, the committee chair, who is very active on Twitter and supports the local. They also know that her partner is on the local chamber board and a former teacher, because remember, they're going after education related legislation. So that's a really important research point for them to know. Um, the committee chair is also already a weekly guest on a local political podcast, which will we'll connect those dots here in a second. So these before we go into the next step, I just want to also flag these tools for you all. So these are um, online tools that can help you determine who your audiences are and or where they already live online. What are they searching for on Google that relates to your organization or to your campaign? And all of these have either, um, paid options that have more features or free option. And I'll tell you, like usually even if you just sign up for the free, they all have free trial. So even if you just sign up for the free trial, you usually can get done the amount of research that you need done for your organization in that time period. So it's an easy way to save some money there. So these are just some quick tools to check out when you have a minute. Um, and then we move on to step three. So developing your call to action. So I believe particularly in our space because, you know, the trauma informed movement, by and large, what we're trying to do is educate, activate and advocate, educate, activate and advocate. And so I personally feel that any communication that goes out that doesn't include a call to call to action, it's almost like a wasted opportunity, right? Attention spans are so diminished these days. Inboxes are so full these days. There's no reason to reach out to your community unless you've actually got an action item attached to it. And so what you really want to think about here is like in developing your call to action, there's it's nuanced. So how do you want your audiences to not only act, but how do you also want them to think and feel about the topic? Because that's going to influence the way that you message it and the tactics that you choose to, um, distribute that information and to demonstrate it and display it. Um, and then also, I've listed just a few other reasons of why I think it's so important to do, uh, calls to action for sure on this step. Um, and then I also want to just point out, so like with calls to action, you always want to make sure that they're clear, compelling and obviously aligned with your goals. Otherwise again, wasted opportunity. You also want to make it super easy for people to act. So think brightly colored buttons on your website using QR codes and fliers and fact sheets, hyper linking your documents to either source material or the call to action. Again, just to make it as easy. You never want to make people go have to go Google something or figure it out. You just want to make it clear and easy to figure out. So the orange team, in this case, they've decided their call to action is going to be a round up campaign where patrons at partnering businesses can round up their bill to donate towards our goal. We will also ID former foster youth already working at our partner businesses to help serve as spokespeople and ambassadors for our marketing and social media efforts. So the big asterisk with this one is, um, we have a whole bunch of tools, and we link to it at the end of this presentation to really help guide the process so that we're modeling the model when uplifting lived experiences so that we don't retraumatize or that we don't trigger, and that the survivor or the person who's sharing their story, um, feels empowered and knows that they have voice and choice, and they understand how their story is going to get used and they have co-creation in that process. So we have a lot of materials to help folks do that. Um, which we'll get to at the end of this presentation. And then the green team has decided that they're going to sponsor a policy breakfast with their local Rotary and Chamber of commerce. They're going to invite local media and their stakeholders and partners to participate on the panel. Excuse me. Local media will be attending covering local stakeholders and partners will be participating on the panel. And then they're going to distribute fact sheets and talking points to all the attendees. Um, they're also reaching out to folks on their board to see who has a relationship with the, um, the chair's partner. Because, remember, the chair's partner is a former teacher, and so they're likely to already be, you know, educated on the need and the why and the how of the request to begin with and could end up being a useful ally. And in educating their partner to support your bill. And then also they're going to reach out to the podcast host, right. The podcast host that they already know, the the committee chair participates in weekly and pitch them the idea of, hey, let's do a whole podcast around this topic. Uh, we can supply an expert and then obviously, you know, invite the the chair person to participate as well and get them on the record talking about this sort of thing. So then last but not least, you want to talk. You want to think about your platforms, and then you also want to think about sort of how are we going to get this work done? Right. Because it's great to have this beautiful comprehensive communications plan, but how are you going to actually execute it? So first up, communications platforms and channels. What I'm what I mean there is it can include anything from Earn Media your website, your newsletter, your social media. It can even be community events and each option. Sorry, my computer just slid and each option is going to come with pros and cons. So for example, securing news media coverage might look really good to donors or foundations that you're trying to attract, but you don't. The downside to to using an earned media approach is you don't really have control over the timing. You don't have control over the content. Um, you don't really have control over the outcome. And so it can be a very time intensive process with, um, you know, not high risk, but like medium to high risk, because, again, you don't know how it's going to turn out versus if you focus on building out your existing website, newsroom, blog and your existing email listserv. Right, because some of you have kind of your universe already captured in your databases, uh, whatever you use to manage your members or your community. And so there's another strategy where you also just sort of lean heavily on that, and you create content on your website, and you create videos and you create social media content, and then you just position it to reach the to reach your email list, sort of directly through blast emails, through social media targeting all sorts of different things. And the con there is, you might not reach as large of an audience as if there was an article in the local paper, but you have complete and control or control over the timing and the content and the messaging so that nothing gets, um, everything gets communicated the way that you want it to. And then I also say like, no staff, no problem. Not entirely sure. I don't want to be flippant, but you do have options if you've got either limited bandwidth or, um, staff options to actually execute this stuff. So a lot of folks, um, uh, have found success in reaching out to like, local colleges and seeing if there's interns, um, a lot of colleges, you know, a lot of colleges, communications and journalism departments have internship programs already built in, or data job board databases that you can lean on. There's also local freelancers, um, just about in every city these days that can do this sort of work. And they can be incredibly, um, cost affordable to, to utilize. And then also local firms, you know, local public relations, local marketing firms are always looking for pro bono work to support their larger portfolio. And so it's totally normal to reach out to these folks and, and make the ask right of like, hey, we have this project. We think it's going to take this many hours. You know, here's sort of what we're thinking, you know, are you guys interested in helping us out, and if so, can we meet to discuss it further? And what I found is the most successful partnerships are when you're asking as a specific as possible. So less of a we need a communication plan for this versus we need a landing page, web landing web page built for this donation campaign that we want to run. Or we have an event coming up in three weeks, and we want to help generate some local media coverage and get media to come out and help. Can you can you help with that specific as possible? It's going to also help them ensure that they have the time and bandwidth and staff to help so that it's successful. And then also be realistic, right. It is going to be pro bono, a little bit of like you do get what you pay for and so be realistic. Um, it's going to probably be a bit difficult for, for a pro bono project to get a Wall Street Journal article written, because those are incredibly time intensive processes to get done. But things like press releases helping turn out media for an event, writing op eds, you know, pitching to local podcasts. Specific projects are easier for firms to help you with. And then also, how can you reciprocate, right? How can you make it a win win partnership? So that could look like a whole bunch of different ways. Things that I've done in the past is have the have you the organization, create a case study on the partnership that you post on your website, you post on social media, you tag them in it, and then they can also utilize that for any future client pitches that they have. Um, it can be as simple as just thinking and tagging them on your social media profiles. Um, it could also be sponsorship recognition on your website or at an upcoming event. And it also could be, um, coming together and pitching a story to local media about how a local firm and a local nonprofit came together to support the community. Local media love covering that sort of thing. So there's all sorts of ways to sort of make it worth their while. Beyond the obvious mission of helping the world become more trauma informed. So in this example, what they what the orange team decided is they've got one staff person that they're going to assign to the project who's going to execute the whole campaign. So they're going to rely on volunteers and board member participation to recruit the participating businesses. Right. Because this is a multi-layered process. ID the former foster youth interested in sharing their experience and then developing a fact sheet, talking points and press release for the media outreach. So they've got a staff person that's going to sort of facilitate and be the cruise ship director for the project. The green team actually is lucky and has a board members nephew who has experience in communications and marketing and is willing to and interested in donating their services pro-bono. So they're going to handle all logistics and execution. And then the executive director for the nonprofit will serve as the liaison and project manager to both ensure the project is on track, but also to make sure that the board and other folks involved receive timely updates and requests for assistance. Okay, so if you remember nothing else from all of that, here's some hopefully helpful and handy key takeaways. You always, always, always want to define success and align goals. You want to know your audiences. You want to craft compelling calls to action, and you want to leverage communication platforms strategically. And you want to empower collaboration and reciprocity. Oh, I said that right on the first try, uh, whenever possible. So that is the roadmap. So now we're going to go into the breakout activity.
00:24:42So. All right, all right. Here's where I shine.
00:24:48So these so you've actually got sort of like choose your own adventure. So you can either um, brainstorm around a specific communication need that one of you has right now. And you can kind of talk through like the first couple steps. What's your ultimate goal? How are you going to measure success? You know, what do you already have? What do you need. Or you could also just have a general discussion around what's worked for you in the past, what common challenges you faced and overcome. Or a third option, um, choose choose. Choose your adventure.
00:25:15So just direct my group.
00:25:20That that will be a group decision. But we appreciate the enthusiasm very much.
00:25:25Just telling you. Feelings.
00:25:29Thank you.
00:25:30Thank you.
00:25:31And then, just as a reminder, these are our community agreements. Um, that we try to abide to when we're speaking and communicating and discussing. And so. Jessie, I'll let you take it from here in terms of breaking it out.
00:25:43Laura, one quick question is, do we want to give, like some time for the brainstorm on the sheet that's in the chat before breakouts or go straight into the breakouts?
00:25:56Uh, okay. Let's we'll share that it exists and give folks a chance to pull it up if they want to. But I think it's unrelated enough that we can probably just go straight into the breakout. But let's let's discuss it real quick. So this first link, um, QR code, the communications roadmap, discovery questions. So everything in that presentation, I tried to section out with all of the questions you need to think about for each section. Right. So it's like a full discovery process, um, that covers all of the steps. That's more of a takeaway for you all to, to take back to your office, take back to your desk and, and do separately with your team or by yourself. Um, but that too, that exists. And then these are some of the other resources that we mentioned. But we'll call this slide back up again after the breakout activity.
00:26:42Right on. Thank you. Um, and I am just setting the breakouts here. Um, if you don't mind. Did we read out the community agreements while I set up? You, me to read them out?
00:26:57Sure. Yeah. So we will commit to inviting everyone to participate, while every while allowing everyone the right to pass. We demonstrate respect by giving our attention to the person who has the floor. Creating space for others perspectives, experiences, ideas and contributions. Prioritizing impact over intention. Preserving confidentiality and privacy. We also choose and use our words with intention. Um, we engage with curiosity and compassion rather than shaming others or making assumptions. So we always want to call in instead of call out. We try to use inclusive language that's accessible to people with varying levels of knowledge and familiarity with the topics being discussed, and we try to take and make space by paying attention to how frequently, how long, and how quickly we participate. We speak from our own experiences by using AI statements instead of generalizations. And last but not least, we engage in ongoing self-reflection. Uh, taking care of ourselves in whatever way makes sense for each of us during the discussion.
00:27:59I don't. Thank you. Laura. Um, so I'm about to open the rooms. Y'all will have 15 minutes during those breakout rooms, and we'll be sending a few messages to you. Um, and if there are any problems, if you're in a room where others are not participating, please feel free to come back into the main room or send us a message. And we're happy to help out with all of that. But opening the breakout rooms now and looking forward to hearing about the experiences very, very soon. Welcome back everyone, and thank you, James. I hope that everyone had such a wonderful breakout room experience. Laura I'll pass it back over to you. Yeah, absolutely excited to hear from everyone. Totally.
00:28:50And as we have as we enter the discussion phase, I'm just going to leave this slide up for folks. So this is um, these are all the resources that, uh, that we've mentioned in the call. So that first one, just as a reminder, the communications roadmap discovery questions, that link is actually going to take you to the blog post on our website that also is going to host this PowerPoint presentation and video later today. Uh, the second link is we've got a whole module in our advocacy series just on storytelling. So for folks that want more information on sort of how to model the model, how to do storytelling in a trauma informed way, that's a great resource. We also have a guide to trauma informed meetings, discussions and conversations. That's meant to be a little bit more, um, for meetings, discussions and conversations. But there are some really, really great concepts and principles that apply to communications and marketing as well. So worthwhile. And then guide to trauma informed journalism. Same thing sort of geared for journalism. But this one's also really, really good for folks who are still trying to figure out the best, most trauma informed way to uplift lived experiences. We've got some really great tips and advice, uh, in the guide to Trauma Informed Journalism on how to just make sure there's voice and choice and empowerment in that process. So with that, I'm just going to open it up because we are a smaller group today. So anybody that wants to share what the group discussed and or questions, we'll just we'll open it up.
00:30:20I'll go.
00:30:25Let's see.
00:30:26Um, I don't know if anyone else from my group wants to go, but we were talking and. And of course, I was trying to. Uh, direct things a bit. Because, you know what I noticed? This may be my own prejudice, but this is what I noticed. A lot of your educational types. You do things very wordy and you like, you take up much time to, you know. It's like you're writing notes. But I never was good with notes, so I like to be short, stinking to the point. Um, everything the lady spoke about this morning. I do, but I don't write it down. I don't keep a list. Uh, the hobby, I just. I'm directed by God. Maybe I'm lucky in that way. He puts me where I need to be, and then the only thing I have to do. Then I go to work, communication, talking to people, let them know what I do. And one thing I found out, everyone is affected by trauma. So I have a product that everyone needs. They may not want and they may not understand what a why they needed, but it's my job to give it to them anyway. Sooner or later they'll see the light. And as long as I get out there and do what needs to be done. You know me for a while, Jesse, and I'm getting stronger and better at what I do. The more you do it, the better you'll be. And that's the whole key. I can't be keeping a list. Oh, my God, that's that's so slow me down. But that's me.
00:32:17Well and we all need our system, so I'm glad you found yours. One thing I do want to piggyback on. Oh. Go ahead.
00:32:23No. Yes. Well, that's one way I. I haven't found it, I live it. I am what I do. And that that is the difference. That is a main difference is, you know. That's why everything involved and everything needed will be done at one time or another. I can't dictate when I don't even know when it just will happen, when it's time. Or when I'm ready, whichever comes first. Sometimes that I don't even know. You know.
00:33:02So how it will happen?
00:33:04Yeah. As long as I make it fun, it has to be fun to me when it stops being fun. You know that I won't do it. I don't want to take up all the time because I love to talk.
00:33:19Thanks.
00:33:20And Laura, did you have. Did you have one? I also saw Debbie's hand up, but. Absolutely.
00:33:25I just want to make one quick comment. So, um, the point about, you know, sort of, uh, short, uh, concise messaging is absolutely right. But the way that we get around that at KTP, because on the one hand, when it comes to communications and marketing and particularly advocacy, call to action based communications and marketing, you do want to be a short and as concise and as clear as possible. And also we have to balance that with this stuff is really heady and it's like it is complicated and there's a lot of nuance and there's a lot of context to it. So the way we get around that is just hyperlinks, frankly. So whether it's an email newsletter or even a press release or email blast or a blog post, we will try to keep it as short as possible, but then linking to places where they can dive deeper guides and discussions or video or podcasts, um, so that folks who want to go deeper can. But that for folks who already are with the program and know and just need to know, okay, where do I need to go to contact my legislator? They can find that faster. So thank you. Um, Debbie, did you have your hand raised?
00:34:24Yeah. I just say real quick the person I met with was in I believe in she was in Puerto Rico. And so there was a little bit of a language barrier. But what we were able to share is that we both have a passion for, uh, being able to facilitate seeking safety. And so we were able to talk about that and implementing some of that.
00:34:47And what if you don't mind sharing, like, what have been some of the the ways that you've been able to do that so successfully? What is there like, um, is there a secret sauce recipe where there have been like a few factors that have just made all the difference?
00:35:00You know, where I mostly interface about seeking safety has to do with services for domestic violence victims, or actually those who are accused of committing the violence in terms of possibly helping them be a little more ready for a group process, because that's a very safe setting. It's very facilitated, and people get used to hearing that word safety and creating that. You know, that vagal response that maybe allows them to look at things they weren't willing to look at before?
00:35:36Yeah.
00:35:38That's such a great point, right? Because if folks are triggered or agitated or feeling defensive or anything, it's going to be so much harder for them to receive the messaging that you're trying to convey.
00:35:49Thank you, Debbie and Rose.
00:35:51I saw your hand up for a minute. Was that intentional?
00:35:55Well, how does it go? Thanks for having me. Can you hear me?
00:35:58Yes, we can hear you.
00:35:59Great. Okay. Great. Great. Awesome. Yeah.
00:36:01So we we, um, had a group of three. You know, we had a few things in common. Um, we were all dealing with the audience of the youth. Right. Um, and then, um, and Marisol talked about, uh, her, um, her education. But, you know, she's an educator, and she works with youth sports, implementing the trauma informed care principles, um, and focusing on the body brain connection. And so, um, she really was very transparent, which I really appreciated. But she talked about how, um.
00:36:34She's just.
00:36:34You know, she's in this and she's like, you know, she's small and she's really just grateful to be involved with this organization, learning a lot and being part of the organization, but still trying to figure out where am I going. Right. And so I thought that was very powerful because she's got, you know, she she knows what she wants to do, but just trying to figure it out. Right. Things being a small organization. And then we had Sue Shaw also come on where she really, um, you know, talked a lot about, you know, she was originally an educator. Well, she's an educator, but bringing on her, um, her son's friend and and then I think seven other youth battling with, um, you know, PTSD and certain things like that, um, and just really trying to figure out where, where am I going from here? And then you got me, um, that, you know, I came from the Institute for Trauma Informed Care. I'm in a new position at the hospital now. Was in corporate. I'm in the hospital, and I'm leading the trauma survivor network group here at the hospital. And we have 208 hospitals that are already involved. Um, University hospital is a level one trauma center. The program has been dormant for a while. Um, and so we're trying to revive that. But one of my challenges and I, like I told the group, and when I'm looking at this list that you all brought up was what is my ultimate goal and how am I going to measure that? Right? Because I'm dealing with, uh, trauma, you know, patients that have gone through trauma, they've had an injury, whether it's an amputee or whether someone that's gone through, uh, being involved with a gunshot wound injury and then, you know, seeing them on the other side and helping their families, you know, enhancing their survival skills, self-efficacy to manage the day to day challenges. But how do you measure that? So that's we had some pretty good conversations.
00:38:24I so appreciate that point being brought up, because I think it's a really important point. So traditional communications, PR, marketing, advertising, they rely a lot on what they call KPIs, key performance metrics. So that can be anything from impressions. It can be, you know, how many media clips you secured, but it is half racket and half real. And I say that candidly, as someone who's been doing this for 20 years, because particularly in our space, when the process is ongoing, there's usually not a final point, right? It's an ongoing process, and it's really, really hard to judge impact because even if you can say how many impressions you got from your Facebook promotions, even if you can say, well, we got three articles in the Sacramento Bee and we know that they have this large readership. So, you know, you still don't. It's hard to tie that to okay, but then how did that person cross our threshold. Right. Or how did we help someone or how did we write. And so you know, so it can be tricky. So I think but but also it can be important I wouldn't overthink it though. Like if you don't have a board and if you don't have donors that you have to report back to to show that, that they got a return on investment, right, for whatever the investment was, whether it was staff time or budget, then I wouldn't worry about it as much. I think then the then the focus on like, is it successful? Well, is it successful in that like we're, you know, did we clearly communicate where were the messages and content, content and tactics and strategies aligned with our mission and with trauma informed principles, right. Like, did we identify our target audiences to the best of our ability and like, reach them where we know that they live, right. Like then it almost becomes like the process itself can be a metric to show that it worked. But yeah, it's really, really, really tricky to sort of figure out if particularly in our space, if anything that you're doing is actually making an impact.
00:40:20Those are.
00:40:21Key. Good points though. Thank you for.
00:40:22That, I appreciate that.
00:40:24Well, and other metrics to to sort of think about if you've got back end analytics on your website, like let's say, um, let's say your campaign is you're hitting send on three press releases over a time period about a particular topic and all three of those press releases live on your website, pulling up back in analytics to show how many um users and visitors um reviewed. The content can also be kind of a helpful metric. But again, who was that? You don't know who it was and you don't know the outcome of what reading that did to them. So yeah, take it with a slight grain of salt. But thank you. That's a great thank you.
00:40:58Laura. As we continue on I'll post the links in the chat. Do you mind if we take the resources down? Some folks are just raising their hands and I see. Joey. I see your hand up.
00:41:09Sure. Um.
00:41:10If we could just take the slides down for a second.
00:41:13Oh, slides that were.
00:41:14Yeah, because we'll put them back up before the end. But just some folks are raising their hands. So I saw Joey and Bill at least. But Joey. Go ahead.
00:41:22Yeah, sure. Um. Thank you. I am the training coordinator for my organization. Um, and we have kind of run into a bit of a challenge or barrier in relation to Facebook. Advertising, and I don't know if you may have some insight into that. Um, but the work that we do is obviously around trauma resilience, abuse prevention. So the the issue we're running into is that some of our posts advertising, our upcoming trainings are being flagged because keywords like trauma and abuse are in them. Um, and we are then not able to to get that information out to folks about our upcoming, you know, trainings. Um, which is kind of the whole point of us posting on Facebook. So I don't know if you have insight into, like, what those keywords are, how to get around some of that so that we're able to get this content to folks who need it.
00:42:14So the bad news is the keywords change. And the bad news is that Facebook is spotty with their enforcement. Right? So you'll get away with it for some posts, and other posts will get flagged, but enough times and they'll suspend your account. And it's, you know, a huge pain. So I would say, um, you know, every couple of months or so, Google, uh, Facebook algorithm banned keywords, something like that, or censored keywords. And it should come up with the latest because I think particularly with the 2024 election happening this year, they're going to be even more diligent on that sort of thing. Um, with all the the wildness going on in the world right now. Um, but, uh, the way that I usually get around that is I will try to put that sort of information into the graphic that I've made for the post and that typically, sometimes it's still they'll still flag it, but like 99% of the time it will go through. And then you just try to keep your caption more like. For more information, visit this website, right. Or to register and for more information. So, um, you know, the only slight downside of that is obviously when in the design of that graphic, you want to make sure it's not too text heavy, right? You don't want to go overkill because it's that will trip the algorithm for just not being an esthetically pleasing graphic. And it'll show up lower in the search results. They'll push it away because they don't they'll they don't think it's compelling for people to look at. So you do have to kind of measure that. So I would say almost like think about like what are the key terms you can't put in the caption and try to get those into the graphic and then put the rest in the caption.
00:43:41If that helps. You know.
00:43:42Could I step in here?
00:43:44Yes, sir.
00:43:45Okay. Because I have expertise in this field. Um, maybe LinkedIn would be a better, better place for you or. Check your advertising, check out what you may be doing wrong for Facebook and change it a bit. Um, you know, evolve it, evolve and make it more, more suitable for them and analyze. See the other ads you're up against and what they're doing and what you're not doing. Okay. Don't try to figure out the algorithms because that's virtually impossible. See what you're doing compared to what others are doing that are there. Or and LinkedIn is more of a intellectual spot. Maybe that's where you should concentrate on or find another medium.
00:44:47Yeah, I appreciate that.
00:44:49You're welcome, sir. I try to help wherever I can, whenever I can. Have a great day. Thanks, chaplain James. Matter of fact, New York City.
00:44:59Thank you.
00:45:00Bill, I think you were next.
00:45:03Yes. So when it comes to really showing impact, one of the areas where we've worked is in Arkansas, where they were really trying to deal with families in crisis often, you know, incarceration, substance abuse, homelessness, lots of trauma. And they were two things. One was a system approach to collaborative case management. And in doing that, as they worked on connecting teams of people with the individuals to develop sort of their game plan for getting out of crisis to career and flourishing, they were capturing data on 13 different dimensions of their lives, on a scale from crisis to flourishing. And so it could be where they at risk, where they in crisis, where they stable and so on. And they've, they've been capturing that for now. Thousands of people that they've been helping and they keep them in the system for a, you know, years because they're getting help with their efforts. And it's not all just fragmented work. And we just did a webinar on that. The it's a nonprofit. So they developed a very powerful but very economical platform called Hope hub. And they've deployed it in a trauma informed approach to really think about how do they help reduce the trauma, how do they help people heal and get on track? But the beauty of it is that the data that they get is really concrete data. Being able to show people that moved from crisis to at risk, from at risk to stable, from stable to, you know, whatever the there's five steps for each one of these. And um, and then they can look and see what they did, who was on their team helping them. Um, so we the webinar got rave reviews. So. Yeah. And Carrie just commented on it. She saw the webinar. Um, so I put that link in there under the Health Talk Hope hub.
00:47:07Yeah, I know, I know.
00:47:08Like comprehensive data collection can be just really difficult. So that sounds that sounds great. And then depending on just to sort of extrapolate that to the once you get to a stopping point with that data, um, and or every couple of years or so, depending on the legalities and ethical ness of using it, that data could become so much content, whether it's a report, a press release, right? You could come up with policy recommendations based on that data that you release to the to the media. You could host webinars around that. You could do all sorts of things. Um, of course, keeping in mind whatever legality and ethical.
00:47:43Yeah. And they're they've got all of the HIPAA and all that other details covered for the operational use of it. And then, um, they haven't begun working with the academics who know the appropriate, you know, rules for de identifying and working with the data, but they're now getting up to five years in some of their communities where they've been working. So it's it's a great data set. And but it sounds like the key thing is that the data is essentially just the digital exhaust of the process of helping people. So it that's that's much better than having to do the work and then enter a bunch of data someplace.
00:48:18Right.
00:48:18Well and something and I'll get to Carrie next. But something that was that said that was said earlier, an idea just popped in my head another way. Also to sort of prove success is if you're co-creating communications campaigns. Someone mentioned that they were they actually brought in the youth, right, and co-created the program and stuff with them. So that can also be a success marker in terms of, hey, we sat down with all of our messaging and content materials with the audience that we're trying to target, and they told us in an informal focus group or an informal meeting setting that like this resonates, and then it lands on and lands with them. That also could be another way to develop some sort of measurement of success when it's, you know, difficult to do. So. Um, but, Carrie, I saw your hand up. I hope I'm going in order. Sorry if I'm missing anybody.
00:49:05Actually, my hand was not up. I was just agreeing. But. But I will say that the Hope hub thing is amazing because it does have organizations in those Arkansas communities working together as a team, um, not competing with each other and not. Eyeing each other, but instead keeping the eye on the prize of seeing the number of families in the community go from living at panic. And I'm not sure I've got the I don't I won't have the terms. Yeah, but but to go from crisis to flourish and hey, Jesse, what have we been talking about? Flourish. Envy. If we could get people to look at where people are flourishing and how we can get people to be, um, mindful of what are people doing where where people are flourishing. That's the ticket. You know, I think about phrase, but statement carry.
00:50:11I love I love where you're going with this.
00:50:14Well, just we gotta get all people to flourishing. And in some countries in the world. People flourish in other industrialized nations. People flourish in the fact that there are 13 counties in Arkansas where people are flourishing. I think that's so beautiful. And I've got the metrics, and the metrics are, just, as Bill says, a byproduct of the work.
00:50:38Wow.
00:50:39That's pretty cool. So I didn't mean to say anything. I didn't really have my hand.
00:50:42No, no, no, that's fine.
00:50:43But that also makes me think too. I mean, just even the process, right? The fact that these groups have come together and are collaborating and working together instead of competing, that's a media story. That's a case study that could be replicated around the country. That's something that policymakers would be very interested in learning about. So there's whatever this Arkansas thing is. Sounds ripe for some really cool communications. Once, um, once you hit a certain milestone where you're ready to present it.
00:51:08Yeah, I think it's a it's it's a great story. So thanks. Yeah.
00:51:13It needed to be said Gary.
00:51:15Pardon me.
00:51:16It needed to be said. Carrie. Thank you. And now spread what's going on there to the rest of the states and everything. All right.
00:51:30Gotcha transcends competition to get all.
00:51:32There you go.
00:51:33My info is in the chat. Chaplain James, we should talk.
00:51:40Okay, great. Any other questions or comments? Otherwise, we'll go back to the last few remaining screens. Okay seeing none, let me share a screen. And obviously if you come up with others, please. Holler, holler. Okay.
00:52:02Whoop!
00:52:03So just real quick, here are the resources again, everything that we discussed today in the video and the PowerPoint will be at this first link, the communications roadmap discovery questions that will be up later today. And then we've got another few calls already scheduled. We've got through May. So March is going to be all about Whitney's. Incredible. I can't wait to read it. Policy report where she basically, um, you know, no problem. It took five minutes to put together. She basically combs the country for everything that happened at the state level in 2023. That's related to trauma informed policies and legislation. And she does an incredible analysis, breaking down what we're seeing and what's working in the state level. So it's fantastic. So that'll be March. This call April is going to be all about trauma informed workplaces. And we have a guide on our website already that sort of lays out our case for how and why to do so. And then May 15th will be a new presentation for us. So that's going to be all about Nash, uh, National Foster Care Month and and youth advocacy, child welfare that sort of thing. So, um, that's where you can register for all of those great upcoming events. And then last but not least, we have a feedback forum. So we love to hear from folks what you thought about the call, what went well, what could go better in the future? And this is my email in case anyone has follow up questions, I'm available to you all to brainstorm to help pitch. I can pull media lists, you know, whatever you all need. We are here to help move the movement forward.
00:53:29This was a great call, I loved it.
00:53:31Thank you. I appreciate everybody's time. All right, Jesse, I'll turn it back to you.