Outreach: How to initiate activities and what's the incentive?

How do you initiate activities, who takes the lead and what’s the incentive for involvement?
These are key questions you’ll need to answer. Most producers offer grants to public television stations or community organizations as incentives for mounting local outreach around a film or series. NAPT has developed relationships with several stations across the nation, and, in some cases, can help you facilitate creating a partnership. Grants are the best incentive for encouraging participation in your effort. In fact, grants have become so popular that stations carefully pick and choose their projects. For that reason, you’ll need to “sell” your grant and project to stations or local organizations.

Stations gauge their interest in outreach projects based on the station mission, interest of management or staff in the topic, community interest/focus on the topic, current workload, knowledge of the producer and their work and the amount of the grant. Be aware that some stations will not consider small grants—below $2,000  for small stations and below $5,000 for large markets—because they feel the work involved in applying for the grant, mounting local activities and reporting results is not worth that level of funding. If you have a small amount of money and want to provide grants, concentrate on smaller markets where the grant will make a bigger difference.

Also, check with some of the stations you want to target and ask if they would be interested in the grant program at the grant level you are offering. It may be that the combination of the topic, target audience and grant opportunity are an appealing package, regardless of the size of the grant.

Whether you work with public television stations or community organizations, think about whether it makes sense to dictate a specific activity, such as the March Point example of production training sessions (see the sidebar at right for more examples of activities) or whether your project lends itself to letting local stations or organizations and their partners decide what outreach focus makes the most sense for their community. An example of the latter approach is the Robert Wood Johnson-funded New Routes to Community Health (www.newroutes. org/projects), which seeks to improve the health of new immigrants and refugees using locally-focused media. The benefit of leaving the decision to your grantees is greater ownership and interest in the project.

Sample benefits of working with a station
• Experienced working with film producers and video outreach
• Established audience and name recognition in the community
• Knowledge of how to reach viewers and staff to assist
• Existing networks through web site, program guide and other communications
• Facilities and resources that may be useful for promotion and outreach

Sample benefits of working with organizations
• Established networks and connections in the community, at the local or national level
• Interest in your topic that aligns with their goals
• Adds value to their planned events and activities
• Adds credibility to your efforts on a local, regional or national level
• Potential to share costs for promotion and outreach undertakings

Types of outreach activities

• Workshops and conferences
• Town hall meetings, leadership forums and community summits
• Conversation cafés
• Fairs
• Training programs (including teacher trainings for credit)
• School events and campaigns
• Recognition programs
• Contests such as writing scripts, videos, essays or creating artwork
• Art exhibits
• Performances
• Public readings
• Active family events such as walks, geo cache contests
• Local history, science or nature tours
• “How to” workshops such as cooking, crafts, digital storytelling or exercise and health

Online Grant Submission and Management

NCME's online PlanIt! (mediaengage.org) grant management feature offers producers and funders a standard application tool where stations can apply for specific grants. PlanIT! is a Web-based planning and assessment tool developed by the NCME and available free of charge to public television producers and stations.

For more information, contact Cristina Hanson at NCME, 608.263.0297. In addition to grant management, you’ll want to post your effort to the NCME pipeline, which provides visibility of your film and outreach within the system.

Thinking About Money

When you plan your outreach, you’ll want to develop a realistic budget for expenses. Here are some items to consider in your spreadsheet:
• Staff and contract personnel
• Grants to stations or organizations
• Studio rental (if you produce a short outreach reel for meetings and events)
• Outreach consultant
• Evaluation consultant
• Facility rental for activities (if not included in grant-funded activities)
• Food or promotional give-away costs
• Equipment costs, such as renting AV equipment
• Promotion and ad placement
• Advisor stipends (if you offer to provide honoraria for proposal review)

A Word About Social Marketing

It’s good because we get to express ourselves, the way we live and the way we live as Native people.

— Nick Clark in March Point

Social marketing borrows techniques from the commercial world to impact public health and social issues by changing individual behavior. Not to be confused with social networking Web sites, such as My Space and Facebook— which are tools for marketing, promotion and outreach to reach audiences through the Web. Social marketing is an approach to outreach that seeks to change the behavior of a highly targeted audience. Social marketing strategies have been used successfully for campaigns such as anti-smoking programs and AIDS prevention and substance abuse to name a few. It focuses on:
• carefully identifying the audience,
• finding out from the target audience what barriers inhibit behavior change (e.g. mothers of toddlers who are overweight may cite lack of time as a barrier to exercise)
• finding out what the competition to behavior change is (e.g. watching television instead of exercising); and
• identifying a plan that will overcome the barriers and “beat” the competition. This approach typically focuses on a smaller audience than awareness building efforts, and requires careful research and planning up front. If you choose to use this technique, consider hiring a social marketing expert to help guide your work. You can find information and subscribe to a listserv on the Social Marketing Institute Web site: social-marketing.org.

A Word About Promotion

Like every activity that competes for the public’s attention, successful outreach requires promotion, frequently and persistently. NAPT will help you promote your film. If you plan to use an outside PR professional in addition to NAPT, be sure to ask them about their experience promoting outreach efforts as well as films. Most PR professionals who work in public television have experience with outreach. If you are on a tight budget, you’ll want to use every network available to get your message out about activities and events, screenings and workshops.

One of the most cost-effective strategies is to use the networks that community organizations already have in place. Consider inviting these groups to be your “communication partners” and let them help you spread the word. Many groups like to be associated with filmmakers, and welcome the visibility that comes from a public association of their group with your film. Many public institutions are open to promotion of worthy, educational events, so check with your local library, as well as cafés, book stores, churches and schools or community colleges. Look to promote wherever people congregate, and especially, where you’ll find your target audience.

Evaluation

Like every activity that competes for the public’s attention, successful outreach requires promotion, frequently and persistently. NAPT will help you promote your film. If you plan to use an outside PR professional in addition to NAPT, be sure to ask them about their experience promoting outreach efforts as well as films. Most PR professionals who work in public television have experience with outreach. If you are on a tight budget, you’ll want to use every network available to get your message out about activities and events, screenings and workshops.

One of the most cost-effective strategies is to use the networks that community organizations already have in place. Consider inviting these groups to be your “communication partners” and let them help you spread the word. Many groups like to be associated with filmmakers, and welcome the visibility that comes from a public association of their group with your film. Many public institutions are open to promotion of worthy, educational events, so check with your local library, as well as cafés, book stores, churches and schools or community colleges. Look to promote wherever people congregate, and especially, where you’ll find your target audience.

A Few Words of Advice

• Depending on the requirements of your funder, you may need to bring in an outside evaluator at the start to build evaluation into your initiative, mount a more comprehensive evaluation effort and provide a neutral third party to assess your impact.
• Correlate your survey questions with your goals. Ask only those questions you need answered—avoid long surveys with questions that don’t add value.
• If you want to document a change in awareness, attitude or behavior, you’ll need to do a pre- and post-evaluation to show the change.
• Don’t worry about getting a “bad” evaluation. All the information—“good” and “bad”—can help you build a better campaign next time.