This post was written by Taylor Trahan, design director for Olympia Creative
When viewing the “big picture” in public relations, it seems as though the message is simple: serve your client as best you can. That is absolutely something PR professionals strive to achieve daily. However, there are a thousand pieces to the puzzle of serving a client. An often overlooked piece of this puzzle is service to the communities that clients are in. It’s not only important to maintain and build a client’s customer base but also vital to build and maintain lasting relationships in the community. This is especially true when it pertains to non-profit organizations. The community is often the backbone for support, volunteering and most importantly funding.
By definition social responsibility is developing positive relationships in the community which an organization or business operates. Double the Donation, LLC states that developing strong social responsibility programs, an organization can benefit internally as well as externally. Special Olympics Capital Area (CASOL) holds this principle to a very high esteem. In fact, their entire organization is pretty much centered on it. By reaching out to school systems and other local non-profit organizations they are creating lasting relationships spanning a six-parish area. Through these efforts they are able to impact more and more lives each year through their work. Volunteer training, continual increase in participants and smiles on athletes faces are all examples of the fruits of their work in this area.
Margaret Mead, a famous American cultural anthropologist, once said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it’s the only thing that ever does.” This quote is the epitome of civic engagement. Simply put, the term means to make a difference in the lives of those in the community. The CASOL Area Team Leader, Charles Guillory, and his small team of devoted individuals could have easily been the target of Mead’s quote. They are a team of unpaid volunteers who work tirelessly to impact lives of the intellectually disabled and their families. They do it for nothing more than the smiles, satisfaction and achievements of the athletes that they serve.
Our agency, Olympia Creative, seeks to reflect this spirit in our work for CASOL. In developing a campaign strategy we have undoubtedly kept in mind the need to positively impact this community in our short time with this organization. The work they are doing is inspirational and we want that to resonate. Throughout this campaign our goal is to draw more participants, more corporations and more community members to this organization and help them see the true beauty in the investment. At Olympia Creative we firmly believe that investing time, money or support in CASOL is returned many times over with the experience. It is a privilege to work with these athletes and we hope to convey that message to the community through our social responsibility and civic engagement efforts this semester.
Stay tuned to hear the exciting events and plans that we have coming up for CASOL. Our work is about to officially kick off and we are eager to see where our plans will take us!