Project Marketing

Mike Rivera commented on groups 3 and 5

Mike Watkins commented on groups 5 and 6

Marketing Abstract

Mike Watkins, Andjulon Richardson, Amanda Evans, Michael Rivera

Introduction:

The purpose of this project was to empower low income or at-risk families in meeting their basic needs as well as keeping a home in livable condition.  The project is aimed at making housing more appropriate and safe for families, and in effect, make the community more attractive.   The program uses volunteers to meet the needs of these families as well as a few paid administrative staff.

Rationale:

The literature we reviewed talked about ways to reward and sustain volunteers.  Our program has a heavy focus on the benefits for the volunteers.  The marketing tool looks at benefits such as a tracking system for volunteer hours in order to assist volunteers in keeping a log if needed or desired.  It also discusses the allowance and support of input from volunteers to make the experience as beneficial as possible to volunteers.

Methodology:

We looked at the American Red Cross and Habitat for Humanity.  Both programs rely heavily on volunteers.  Our program takes aspects of each program.  The American Red Cross provides assistance to those in needs and our program does assist in meeting basic needs.  Habitat for Humanity is focusing on housing, which is our main focus as well.   We also have a website, as do the American Red Cross and Habitat for Humanity.  We weighed some the concepts we thought worked best for our program and some of the ideas used in the two programs we examined, did not fit with what we were doing.  For instance, we do not require that participants volunteer on their own projects.

Results:

The highlight of this work would be empowering those who may begin the project feeling powerless.  They are given a lift and then able to sustain the form of living on their own.  It sort of follows the mantra “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day.  Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.”  We want our participants to be able to take care of themselves as the involvement in this program is really for a relatively short time.

Evaluation:

The ideas we need to look at are to allow volunteers proper shadowing of paid employees as well as finding an aspect of this opportunity to make it a little more original.  This will take some further brainstorming.  Tweaking the training process to offer history and shadowing opportunities will be a little easier than finding our ‘hook’ so to speak.  We will need to really evaluate what the community needs in order to add something appropriate.

Group 2 project marketing from Mike Watkins