PR Plan

How should Free Geek grow its PR efforts in the next 3 years?

Some goals:

• Do more outreach to corporations
  • This includes acquiring a vehicle
• More outreach to media outlets and sources of volunteers
  • We'd be using a spiffy printed and online media kit for this.
  • The media kit would need to be maintained, too.
• Dedicate staff time to create regular press releases
• Create more regular email (and possibly printed!) newsletters
• Re-do brochure
  • Bigger, groovier-looking, more eye-catching
  • Possibly create 2 or 3 new brochures targeted at volunteers, donors, ewaste education, etc.
• Gather, take, work with a volunteer to take, and/or pay someone to take a nice set of file photos for outreach materials
• Create a website that's easier to maintain and contains more information
• Pursue info on ewaste legislation and how it would affect us from DEQ
  • Integrate new procedures and stats caused by ewaste legislation into outreach materials
• Get better stats and testimonials from people we benefit for outreach/grantwriting/fundraising materials
• Work with the bookkeeping department to create a good system for acquiring annual report data
• Potentially, continue to work with state legislature to market our model to state government as a way to save money and deal with the problem of ewaste
• Along the way, involve volunteers as much as possible in every facet. They'll be usable in an ongoing way in maintaining the website and writing press releases.

While good outreach materials and a good plan to get the word out will help Free Geek saturate more of the public with our meme and help us get ahead after the ewaste legislation goes into effect, we still want to maintain our hip, laid-back, no-nonsense style. We don't want to media slickster yes men running any sort of show here, kids. Word.

	Good (for Free Geek)	Bad (for Free Geek)
Internal (to Free Geek)	Strengths Strengths are advantages we have that are internal to Free Geek. (Good things we do.) We have the bases and desire to do many of these items The staff available to do this kind of work has grown in number recently We've gotten much better at responding to media requests	Weaknesses Weaknesses are problems we have that are internal to Free Geek. (Things we do poorly or not at all.) There's not enough time to do everything we wanna do We are bad at following through on certain kinds of things No one on staff is super-awesome at graphic design. Many of us want to learn, though. Geek volunteers aren't generally very interested in helping out with PR-related stuff, so we often lack for volunteer help in this area.
External (to Free Geek)	Opportunities Opportunities are advantages we have that are external to Free Geek. (Good things that will or could happen to us.) There are lots of opportunities to learn new things like graphic design, media relations, etc. We haven't saturated the Portland Metro area with our robot army The legislature likes us The public, in general likes us	Threats Threats are problems we have that are external to Free Geek. (Bad things that will or could happen to us.) eWaste legislation may create competition in the recycling industry and take away a core area of our business. EWaste legislation, if passed, might lead to consumer convenience of e-recycling (i.e. curbside pickup which leads to less donations for us) The end of oil could come, and our PR efforts will be moot.