Strategic Prospecting Plan - Youth Literacy + Humane Education

In order to launch our new Little Barkies Rescue Readers Program in partnership with Tails That Teach we need assistance developing an outreach process and creating a pipeline of potential venues and partners to engage with to eventually schedule in person and/or virtual presentations of this initiative. The goal of this collaboration is to work within our local community to provide a youth literacy program that inspires kindness to pets and peers. The proposal and program have already been developed as well as a curriculum and associated materials, including incentive rewards. We would like to equip our volunteer team with a plan that guides them in researching new prospects, identifying key contacts, and reaching out with compelling messages. We would like you to create a simple step-by-step strategy for prospecting in our target market and create a pipeline of interested partners, including all necessary requirements needed so that we can begin scheduling. For this project, Barks of Love will partner with Tails That Teach, a non-profit organization that inspires young children to be kind to pets and people! Their primary focus is children ages 5-8 as these are critical years to start building empathy through the human-animal bond. They partner with animal organizations like Barks of Love that provide humane education, and elementary schools that provide character education by donating their compassion-centered books to use as tools in their programs. Through this partnership, we will empower young children to make good choices and to respectfully care for pets and people. When children are taught to be kind to animals, the ripple effects are boundless and they are less likely to abuse a pet or bully a classmate. Teaching kids to properly care for pets helps them grow up to be compassionate adults and responsible pet owners. By fostering the human-animal bond, children learn caring connections toward all living beings making a better future for animals and people. The project may include, but is not limited to: Identifying new potential venues that align with our current customer base; this includes, but is not limited to, school districts, local animal shelters, local libraries, local youth clubs like YMCA and Boys & Girls Clubs. Compiling relevant forms and paperwork as requested by each partner. Building a customizable outreach script. Creating a simple tracking framework, including metrics, for measuring outreach success. The final project deliverable is a report including research, analysis, and recommendations. It should also include a tracking log of opportunities with next steps to move the project forward. It should assist our volunteer team in successfully prospecting within our target market with actionable contacts and venues that will help us create a program launch schedule.

Virtual Internship Opportunity: Sponsorship/Donation Digital Flexible Package

Our organization is able to offer a virtual internship opportunity for (3) marketing students or teams. The primary focus for the student will be: Branding - Conduct a full competitive landscape assessment; define our organization's brand and core value proposition; identify opportunities and threats facing our brand; assess where and how to improve our brand's presence and differentiate from our competitors. Our last branding brief has not been updated since 2013. Sponsorship/Donation Packet - Plan, design, build and implement a new digital sponsorship/donation packet to focus on a "pick and choose" concept based on the desired level to appeal to more corporate partnerships with a flexible aspect. Use market research, customer surveys and/or focus groups to gain insights into the benefits most valuable to our target customers and develop a competitive level and pricing strategy. Public Relations - Develop and implement a PR strategy around this new sponsorship/donation packet, create collateral, including press releases, current partner testimonials (to utilize in a pitch and possibly within the document that can share who we have worked with before), compiling all media (newspaper, online, magazine features, awards, blogs and other press since our inception as a way to showcase our media reach. Prospecting Strategy - Evaluate our current customer base and make recommendations for further market penetration; assess our current outreach process and develop and implement targeted prospecting; review our prospect messaging, make improvement recommendations, and create new outreach content. Our goal at the end of this experience is: Branding and Marketing Communications - For the student(s) to help us improve our brand's presence and capture greater market share and create an updating brand tuning brief. Sponsorship/Donation Packet - Plan, design, build and implement a new digital flexible sponsorship/donation packet to focus on a "pick and choose" concept based on the desired level to appeal to more corporate partnerships with a flexible aspect using market research as described above. Public Relations - For the student(s) to help us effectively communicate our brand's story and mission to a broad audience and provide an updated compilation of past press and testimonials of current partners. Prospecting Strategy - For the student(s) to help us implement better prospecting that increases conversion rates and boost our sales team's performance. Other duties the student may complete could include : (indicate other duties as exemplified below) Content development, including social posts, blog posts, LinkedIn articles, and website copy related to the sponsorship/donation packet and also past media and press. We will plan to communicate with our virtual intern(s) using these communication tools: Riipen, Google Meet, Zoom, traditional phone calls, facetime, email and text messages. Primary contact : Ashley Cunningham, Founder, Board Chair, Chief Financial Officer Secondary contact: Paige Lefever, President, Vice Chair

Non Profit Competitive Analysis

Number of individual students required: (Example: 5 students) OR Number of students required to work in team: (Example: 2 teams of 3 students) It’s important for us to have a better understanding of how our target audience perceives our brand and competitors. We want to develop clarity on our competitive advantages and optimize our marketing strategy for maximum donation, sponsorship, and volunteer recruitment. This project will include: An identification of our current competitors An identification of potential future competitors (eg. a large company in a similar industry who may enter the space) The creation of a matrix identifying features shared across the companies and those that are different. A summary of 2-4 paragraphs describing our competitive advantages and disadvantages relative to the competition identified. This could be done in the form of a SWOT analysis. We will give you access to organizational assets to support this project such as personnel, website analytics, sales and brand collateral, and more. We can suggest names of competitors to research. Objective We hope to gain a comprehensive understanding of the competitors in our space and how we can differentiate ourselves through our product/service offering, outreach, and our messaging.

Website UX/UI Analysis

We would like insights on how user-friendly our website is. We believe the best way to understand our website’s usability is through studying the User Experience and User Interface. We would like students to evaluate the effectiveness and usability of our website to identify ways to improve the user journey, incentivize our desired outcomes, and increase user satisfaction. We are particularly interested in the following areas: The donation process The foster recruitment process The shop to donate page usability Embedded videos, media, and other possible interactive improvements.