Custom «Campaign Pitch – Lions Befrienders» Essay Paper

Background and Issues Overview

Introduction to the Lions Befrienders Service Association (LBSA)

LBSA is a Voluntary Welfare Organisation, a Singapore branch of the Lions Club group and a member of the National Council of Social Service. Since its establishment in 1995, LBSA helped more than 13,000 seniors through its neighborhood programs and six activity centers (LionsClub, n. d.). The visionary statement of LBSA presents its active care position with regard to the social, emotional, and physical health of the elderly.

In its Befriending and Outreach programs LBSA relies on the extensive collaboration with many “corporations, grassroots organisations, schools and fellow Voluntary Welfare Organizations” (LBSA Website, n. d.). Overall, its circle of stakeholders comprises around 10,000 members, including government ministries, volunteers, donors, sponsors, networking partners, Lions Club, and seniors.

Critical Issues in Singapore Community Development

The LBSA mission goes in line with the Singapore state community strategy. Presented by Prime Minister, the strategic goal to make Singapore “a better home and a great community” relates especially to elderly people (People’s Association, 2015). The population is ageing very fast. As the household size declines, there are increasingly more seniors who live alone. By 2030, there will be 20% people aged 65 and above; in the 2008 health screening 75% of 12,000 seniors “were diagnosed with ‘at-risk’ results” (ibidem).

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Overview of LBSA Strategic Issues and the Report Outline

According to the report of the National Volunteerism and Philanthropy Center, volunteer participation reached a “record high of 32.3%” in 2012 (NVPC Survey, 2013), having increased by 9% in the last two years. However, this rapid growth was largely influenced by the informal and occasional volunteering; the share of volunteer attrition increased significantly compared to 2010 as well. Despite the great momentum of the previous year, the issue of involvement remains important: “Charities need to deepen their relationships with volunteers and increase efforts to convert these occasional volunteers to regular volunteers” (NVPC Survey, 2013).

Whereas LBSA has a solid 20-year welfare experience, it still takes a very modest share of the overall country’s volunteer and philanthropy base. The current trends outlined above present extraordinary opportunities for the development of LBSA’s effective operation.

The current report presents the 2015 communication strategy aimed at gaining further breadth and intensity of LBSA efforts towards its mission in building the active, happy and strong society. It addresses specifically the LBSA’s inherent strong features that would prove beneficial for the strategy implementation, as well as its weaknesses and the external factors that will influence the LBSA activities. The strategy is elaborated from its general goals and objectives to a detailed analysis of targeted audience, communication tactics, channels, and messages.

Situation Analysis

Internal Situation: Strong Features

LBSA possesses extensive experience and unique knowledge of the voluntary welfare operations; it has been enhancing its expertise for 20 years. The LBSA’s effective approach to developing befriending services has become its distinctive feature compared to other welfare nonprofits. In 2009, the association obtained the Non-Profit Organization Award, which recognizes the best practices in volunteer management. LBSA was distinguished for its effective approach to volunteer work as the “mission-critical element” of its operation (NVPC Awards, n. d.) In 2009, LBSA recruited as many as 30 active volunteers (and over 50 volunteers in total) per each of its 18 staff members. LBSA hired a dedicated volunteer coordinator, elaborated a volunteer manual and established structured practices in multi-channel recruitment, training, motivation and performance appraisal of its volunteers (ibidem). The association is nominated for a Leadership Award in Rural Development and Poverty Eradication in 2015 (LBSA Website, n. d.)

Internal Situation: Weaknesses Due to Communication Issues

Despite LBSA’s long history and inherent effectiveness, appreciated by its stakeholders, the association takes only a small niche in the country’s wide volunteer senior citizens` movement. To a large extent, it is caused by gaps in the LBSA`s communication strategy. The communications rely mostly on word-of-mouth referrals. There is much to improve in the digital field: the website newsroom features only ten press articles in 2014; communications are irregular and dispersed among several Facebook pages.

Not the least factor that explains relatively low breadth of LBSA`s efforts is weak brand awareness among Singapore citizens. As there are multiple organizations with similar names and as many as 1,800 thousand grassroots organizations in Singapore, there is no strong knowledge of LBSA. A web-based survey, conducted in 2015 (sample 226 as of March 22, 2015), showed that Lions Befrienders remains unknown to most of the active population. An overwhelmingly high share of the population, 61%, has never heard about LBSA.

Specifically, among the surveyed people that did not hear about LBSA, 43% are aged 18-29; another 40% come from the middle-aged segment. At the same time, the national statistics show that these age groups make the largest (35%-43%) share by their participation in volunteer activities (NVPC Survey, 2013). This identifies the inherent problem of LBSA’s agent recruitment: people, who contribute the most to the volunteer movement, both in terms of efforts and finances, have very low knowledge of LBSA.

External Situation: Threats

The low brand awareness and the high number of non-profit organizations competing for the limited volunteer pool and financial resources, present a substantial risk for the LBSA`s effective operation. In order to succeed, LBSA needs to capture a wider share of active participants and establish a stronger understanding of the LBSA’s valuable input among the population.

External Situation: Opportunities

As mentioned before, the LBSA’s area of activity is very much relevant to the society, which is reflected in the growing involvement of Singapore citizens in the non-profit activities. Support for elderly people became one of the highest priorities in the national policy, represented by the People’s Association SG 50 program. A number of nation-wide events and increasingly growing media coverage shall contribute to the further growth of the society`s engagement. Relying on the two decades of operation, LBSA built strong relationship with many volunteer and donor partners in the public and corporate sectors, which can effectively support its growth.

Goals, Objectives, and Target Audience of LBSA Communication

In view of increasing engagement of Singapore society in the highly relevant issues of support for senior citizens, the goal of the LBSA’s communication strategy is to position Lions Befrienders as the leading elder care agency and the choice organization for volunteer services.

In order to reach this goal, LBSA shall build on its strong expertise in volunteer management. Focus on volunteerism will meet a great response in the society, and it will consequently work to increase the donation part of LBSA`s activities. According to the NVPC Individual Giving Survey, among current volunteers “95% were donors, compared to non-volunteers (86%)”, and the amount donated was nearly twice as high as the amount donated by non-volunteers (NVPC Survey, 2013).

To focus its efforts, LBSA shall target its communication at the most important segment. These are people aged 18-29, who are both the most active representatives of the population and the most potential: “Today’s youths will shape the future of Singapore; we thrive on their creativity and energy to propel us forward… Social capital [is built] amongst the youths through engagement, and through the youths by helping them enrich the lives of others” (People’s Association, 2015). This audience can also reach the highest engagement. Whereas the main reason that prevented people from volunteering is lack of time, mostly due to work, the younger audience can devote more time and effort to the social activities.

Therefore, LBSA will work towards its strategic goal by increasing awareness and growing the share of volunteer participation among the active target segment. It states the following objectives for 2015:

1. To raise awareness of Lions Befrienders to 80% by the end of 2015 (as measured by surveying a sample of people aged 18-60).
2. To increase the volunteers of Lions Befrienders by 20% by the end of 2015 (in the specified target audience).

The Key Message and Strategic Points of the Communication

In its communication strategy, LBSA shall address young active people via relevant channels by appealing to their emotions and presenting their input to make them closer to the LBSA`s mission and increase their engagement in voluntary social activities. This strategic approach shall rely on the evidence-based preferences in communication channels as well as deploy both the emotional and the rational components. The key message to communicate to the target audience is as follows: “Your active contributions to Lions Befrienders will enable seniors who are alone or have limited family support to age happily and have a meaningful life”.

Beyond doubt, each of the potential volunteers has a relative or an acquaintance, who impersonates a Befriendee. The campaign shall touch people`s deep emotions and make them participate, get pleasure out of giving something to people other than their immediate communication circle. The communication will be highly visual, in order to etch an image that would allow the key target public to recall and associate elder care with Lions Befrienders. It will rely heavily on telling the story based on people’s feelings: “By thinking more like a film-maker than a marketer, you can create content your audience will engage with and share” (Bolam, 2014). The story-telling approach will invite the volunteers to share their emotions and pass the message to other people, to feel proud of their effort and link their positive self-esteem to Lions Befrienders, eventually engaging them in more social activities with LBSA. Besides the emotional involvement, people shall see their collective contribution presented in regular reports, numbers, testimonials, web diaries and feedbacks in the common LBSA platform.

Communication Tactics and Media Choice

Lions Befrienders will capture the attention of the target audience in their common media and expand the communication to cover traditional types of media, in order to gain higher exposure. The communication plan shall leverage on the current national NG50 campaign. The plan relies on the intensive activities throughout the year and regular media releases to reach better brand recognition by the end of 2015, when the 20-year success story will be presented at the MediaCorp charity show.

In the choice of communication channels, LBSA should move towards the best world’s practices and invest the resource into its digital communication strategy. According to the NVPC’s report, published in 2002, the United Kingdom was leading by the share of voluntarism (48%) (NVPS Survey, 2002). The UK is setting trends in the world’s charity. According to a recent survey of 28 charitable organizations, “the time is right for digital platforms to play a greater role in volunteer engagement” (CharityComms, 2014). It is critical to consolidate all information in a single platform for presenting resources, capabilities, skills, providing means to connect and communicate as well as to report on activities.

Social media have a special role in the communication plan: 68% of the respondents surveyed in 2015 chose social media as a preferred channel of getting information. The website (46%) and TV (41%) closely followed the word-of-mouth channel that became traditional for LBSA (49%).

Whereas the communication plan of LBSA includes regular media releases in magazines (e.g. 8-days, Her World, SAFRA, Nsmen), newspapers (Sunday Times Newspaper lifestyle section) as well as broadcasts, it will rely heavily on the website communication and Facebook to ensure higher involvement of the target audience. The ongoing stream of communication will be supported by bi-monthly newsletters posted on the website and weekly posts on a single central Facebook page that will consolidate multiple local Facebook pages. All posts, emails and web releases will contain an active link to fill in the participation form. Facebook will be the central means to provide information and facilitate continuous communication. It will also involve a ‘gamification’ approach to interest Befrienders and grow the popularity of the LBSA brand via viral communications.

The online video contest will encourage volunteers to create their diaries and film their own stories about days in the life of a volunteer. Existing members will create their own success stories, upload them to Facebook and share with friends, increasing awareness among the target audience and engaging more volunteers. Each two months the best four videos of the previous period will be selected and broadcasted online and on TV. The resulting series will show progress to the whole story, which will appear on the MediaCorp show featuring the ‘celebrities’ who joined Lions Befrienders in their effort to improve the society.