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

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 a strong community of volunteers. We have a good name in the community. We have a lot of people interested in the ways the technology changes and how it is used. We have chosen to work with old technology, meaning we can see technological changes in advance of their arriving at Free Geek. integrated systems would lead to less reusable stuff (specialized volunteers) we have the advantage to see this coming as we deal with used stuff make recycling more educational (what is this, where would it go if not recycled, etc?) this would be very good for schoolkids (geeklets) to learn We are already experts in reuse	Weaknesses Weaknesses are problems we have that are internal to Free Geek. (Things we do poorly or not at all.) It is difficult for us to make business decisions quickly. We have a hard time doing things that volunteers don't find interesting in a timely manner. Our culture in a bit insular We are bad at following through on certain kinds of things
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.) We can take over more space and use it to grow our services. There will "always" be more unused electronics in the market. There will be "always" a ready supply of people wanting free and cheap stuff. move towards communication in miniature form, teaching people to use these forms of media and communication (i.e. cell phone and ipod esque technology) We could team up with other recyclers, skimming off the good stuff for reuse	Threats Threats are problems we have that are external to Free Geek. (Bad things that will or could happen to us.) eWaste legislation will create competition in the recycling industry and take away a core area of our business. As computers become more integrated learning to build them will be less interesting to potential volunteers. The changing nature of the technology and the way it is used could leave us unable to give people what they want. EWaste legislation, if passed, might lead to consumer convenience of e-recycling (i.e. curbside pickup which leads to less donations for us) integrated systems would lead to less reusable stuff (specialized volunteers) we have the advantage to see this coming as we deal with used stuff More and more crap comes our way, and we do more and more recycling instead of reuse