Northeastern Education Advocacy Effort
“As a team, Neimand Collaborative – so aptly named! – was recruited to collaborate with my organization because of national experience with early education issues. Together, we created the initial branding and communications for a start-up, targeted advocacy organization. Supported by Neimand, the website design and hosting enabled us to manage relationships. Throughout several years of operation, we developed a variety of sophisticated, reader-friendly and dynamic advocacy materials. As planned, the organization closed after slightly more than 5 years of operation: our job was done. We’d provided strategic focus for the previously absent issue of preschool expansion in our region. The to-date result: nearly $1 billion of additional funding has been directed for 3- and 4-year-olds.”
Solution
Supporting the organization, we worked collaboratively to create the brand to support grasstops and grassroots information and initial implementation. Community advocates were empowered by the effort’s website, which managed relationships and provided advocacy materials in the form of videos, easy-to-understand research papers, sample op-eds and letters to the editor and frequent advocacy action items. The organization provided leadership, strategic vision and an active voice in dialogue through local community meetings, communication and grassroots outreach and especially in policy focus.
Impact
These efforts resulted in a bipartisan strategy that allocated tens of millions of dollars during only the second year of advocacy. The nonprofit organization prioritized a laser focus on preschool expansion as that would create the foundation for broader support for other areas of early education.
Intended from inception as a directed, short-term effort to last no more than 3-4 years, the nonprofit organization consciously extended operations through the pandemic years to ensure that preschool education retained its newly achieved regional priority. When the effort ended, it had successfully achieved its objective: To provide strategic focus for preschool expansion and make preschool funding a regional priority. That priority was cemented in an executive and legislative formal plan with funding for universal preschool as a key foundation of the educational program for the region. Through the most recent fiscal year, a total of nearly $1 billion has been budgeted for preschool education.
Services
Research & Analysis
Message & Brand Development
Strategy & Campaigns
Creative Implementation