First Book: Communicating Impact and Engaging Members

When it comes to social enterprises, traditional non-profit communications of reporting impact and rallying donors around your mission needs to balance with engaging members and customers. At First Book, I was up to the challenge.

Through redesigning and utilizing the First Book Blog as a place to provide customers with engaging content to drive sales as well as to report the organizations impact on their mission of transforming lives through educational possibilities I reenergized the site while invigorating our communications. Engagement with the site increased by 103% and the organization had a consolidated place for all stakeholders to view it’s impact in a tangible way.

Here you can view my writing from the First Book Blog, though I'm excited to say the organization has since updated their website and blog changing the design I worked to produce.

These subjects of these blogs were produced through consistent identification of educators whose professions and students had been changed by First Book resources, I built relationships with our members throughout the country to create a comfortable environment for interviews. Those conversations were then crafted into stories to convey their experiences. These experiences had a dual purpose as they were a great way to tap the emotions of donors in our annual fundraising campaigns. I was a key member of the development team, writing e-appeals, developing campaign strategy, and creating visuals to accompany vivid storytelling. The employment of this storytelling tactic lead to a 70% increase in revenue from online giving for two consecutive years.

Below are a few examples of fundraising content, both visual and written, produced for First Book.

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2015 Favorites with pizazz

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770 Pounds of Dreams for His Students

It started with one spelling word. "Beach."

Malik Ray, a first-time second grade teacher in Atlanta, GA, taught his students new spelling words by projecting a photo and having students guess the word before putting it in their notebooks.

On this day, Malik displayed a photo of the sand, a palm tree, a little beach ball and the ocean. The classroom went silent. Not one student guessed the word.

They couldn't recognize the sand; they didn't know the water was the ocean. They had never seen a tree with what they called "arms." They did recognize the ball.

This was when Malik realized that his students had never seen a beach. They had never been outside of the Vine City neighborhood where they resided. His students didn't have what Malik calls "vision" — the ability to see past where they are now and imagine a different life.

But when 770 pounds of books from First Book arrived at their school, that changed.

"When the books arrived, I thought, 'Here are 770 pounds of experience for your children. They are going to dream 770 pounds of dreams,'" says Malik.

Now when they read about faraway places and unfamiliar characters, they ask questions like "How is her hair that way?" "Why do their parents do that when mine do this?"

Students that were reading at a pre-k level when they entered his classroom are now reading chapter books. Their reading assessment scores have improved. They are ready to enter third grade.

And they've started to dream.

"We're starting to talk about their future in a whole new way," explains Malik. "Rather than saying 'I want to be a beautician like my aunt,' we talk about owning a beauty salon. I want them to be able to dream. These books have given my kids hope."

Malik Ray's classroom was able to receive books through First Book's partnership with Wipro Ltd., a global information technology, consulting and business process services company. If you work with children in need, you can access books and resources for your classroom through the First Book Marketplace.