C.O.P.E. Family Support Center
Organization
C.O.P.E. Family Support Center’s (COPE) mission is to prevent child abuse and strengthen family relationships through comprehensive support services that empower parents, encourage healthy relationships, and cultivate nurturing families. Its services range from parent education to counseling and youth workshops and tutoring. Since 2010, under founder and Executive Director Cathy Botello, COPE has served over 1200 families a year and formed numerous partnerships with local organizations to increase Triple P capacity. Triple P is COPE’s Positive Parenting Program, designed to prevent, as well as treat, behavior and emotional problems in children and teenagers. COPE’s grantors and partners include Contra Costa County Mental Health Services, First 5 Contra Costa, Office of Education, Children and Family Services and the Family Court, school districts, and local courts.
Situation
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, COPE foresees the potential for significant budget changes since most of their funding comes from government agencies who are reviewing and re-assessing their budgets. The contract renewal status for two of its four major government funders is unknown at this time. If COPE is unable to renew those contracts, projected revenue will decrease by $320,000, which accounts for one third of its annual budget. Since launching a decade ago, COPE has not had to do much outreach because most of their clients came through government and educational referrals. In the current environment, COPE now needs to diversify its funding sources beyond restricted government grants to continue serving families in need of its programs, and strategic outreach is a critical component of expansion.
Project Objectives
The team helped C.O.P.E. Family Support Center (COPE) develop an effective marketing message(s), which COPE can use to increase visibility among potential clients in underserved communities, to increase visibility among potential clients who are able to pay for services rendered, and to increase visibility among funding sources who can help cover potential clients who are unable to pay.
Project Overview
The project consisted of four phases.
- conducting internal interviews with COPE staff and board members
- synthesizing key strengths and areas of opportunity for COPE’s brand identity
- conducting external interviews with foundations, end-users, and partners to validate identified strengths and areas of opportunity
- determining recommendations for marketing messages with clarity and consistency
Key Recommendations
- COPE executives and board of directors should decide on key attributes that all marketing messages should convey about the organization based on what internal and external interviewees have identified as unique strengths (e.g. personalized, tailored counseling and access to broad array of resources in partnership with family to strengthen all families as foundational to healthy community)
- COPE should deliver the same message across all channels.
- COPE should expand its online marketing by building a database of end users for quarterly newsletters/updates, asking partners and end users to share and follow its social media posts, and asking partners and end users to write google reviews with key words that describe its desired brand identity
Final Report Outline
- Benchmark analysis
- Review of ORG NAME
- Marketing approach
- Recommendations