As with all components of your program operations, design your strategy for effective communication as part of an intentional plan (read more about this in the section on program design). Establish goals for communication and identify any groups that are involved in or might be affected by the program (e.g., constituents or stakeholders). Survey or talk to each group to determine the most effective ways to communicate with them. Format messages - and requests for feedback - according to the characteristics of the targeted group and keep a record of these characteristics. Make a special effort to involve traditionally less involved groups. Designate a contact person for communication with each group (if appropriate) and develop marketing materials about your program to share with schools, families, and community partners. These can and should take multiple forms: a one-page handout, a page on your website, or a brochure. Use Tool 7: Tips for Developing Outreach and Marketing Materials as a resource. You also can go online; have a website for your program and share updates through a program blog or social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter (or both).

Today, information sharing is the norm, and we have the ability to do this in real time. Youth, families, and members of the community not only get a lot of information on the Internet but also have come to expect it. Going online can serve a variety of purposes for afterschool and expanded learning programs; you can use it for storytelling, fundraising, and organizing, for example. Going online occurs in many different ways, with no one-size-fits-all strategy. You may choose to develop a website for your program or create social media accounts on popular sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, or Google - the list goes on and on, and it is ever-changing! You might decide to open an account for creating and sending regular e-newsletters (e.g., MailChimp or Constant Contact) or use software for fundraising and outreach (e.g., Blackbaud's Raiser's Edge). Use Tool 28: Developing a Communication Strategy to help you design a communication strategy for your program.

When sharing information on the Internet, keep your information up to date! People will come to your site looking for information, and they will expect it to be accurate. Mistakes not only create confusion but also might discourage people from coming back to learn more. Make sure to consider your population. Some people, particularly those in lower income communities, cannot access the Internet as readily as others can. Smartphones and home computers, although less expensive than ever before, are still more prominent in affluent communities. Pace yourself by posting enough information to keep people informed but avoid overposting, especially on social media sites. Focus on quality, not on quantity. If you have the resources, designate specific staff members to be responsible for website content and posting on social media sites. Make sure that they understand and use online resources regularly so that they can make your Web and social media presence appealing and effective for a variety of audiences, including young people. You can create a social media section in your staff handbook so that everyone knows the do's and don'ts for online time. Empower your staff members to be brand ambassadors so that they can get the word out about your program but encourage them to do it in a way that is responsible and in line with the program's mission and vision. Sign up for alerts that let you know when someone else has mentioned your program. Google Alerts are a great way to stay on top of this, and they are delivered to your e-mail address on a schedule you create. Finally, have fun! Social media and other online resources are a great way to build community and create connections that open doors to new opportunities.

Communication goals are a good way to ensure you are on track in your communications with staff members, families, youth, and the community. The best way to decide on communication goals for your program is to hold a brainstorming session with your advisory group, staff members, and participants. Remember to tie your goals to the program's overall vision and goals. You can use Tool 36: Visioning Worksheet and Meeting Agenda, which we will cover in more detail in the section on program design. Look at the opportunities and challenges you identify for your program as you think about what you want to accomplish through your communication. Are you trying to raise money? Increase attendance? Recruit volunteers? Just as lessons work better when a teacher consciously teaches to a set of objectives, so, too, will communication be more effective when it is focused on established goals.

After you have set your goals for communication, begin planning for ways to achieve these goals. Be creative in your thinking. For example, if your communication strategy calls for a family newsletter, check with local print shops to see if they will donate the cost of printing. Or figure out if your school or program location will allow you to use its copier. If your communication strategy calls for having an online presence, make sure you have a Web-savvy person who will update and post information regularly to your program's website and social media accounts. You also might want to consider ways that program participants can help. This type of advance planning can save scarce resources and may, in turn, allow you to extend your communication efforts.

You should continually assess the effectiveness of your communication strategy against established goals. Identify someone within the program who is ultimately responsible for all communication. Overall, an effective communication strategy requires a commitment to productive two-way interaction, systematic planning, and review.

Throughout this Toolkit, various data collection tools are provided to help determine opportunities, needs, and interests to inform your programming decisions and measure your progress toward achieving your vision. However, collecting information without a concrete plan for how you will use it wastes time and effort. It also is critical to be transparent with the findings of data collection activities to help you communicate what is happening in your program. For example, you can take a family or youth satisfaction survey, look at the results with your advisory board, and then decide what you will do about it (e.g., change the type of programming you offer or modify your hours). Then communicate those decisions and their impacts to those affected by your decisions - either through your newsletter, a flyer, your website, or whatever you have determined is your most effective means of communication. As such, those you have asked for input will know that their voices have been heard.

If you decide not to make changes (because of costs, logistics, or other reasons), be sure to communicate those reasons. For example, you can write the following: “Expanding our program hours is not in our budget right now, but we are making this a top priority for next year’s plan and are seeking a local community grant to work toward making additional hours available.” Even though visible changes may not be happening, letting people know the “why” behind decisions creates stronger trust in your program.
 

It can be argued that the whole community has a stake in the success of your program. However, for the purpose of effective communication, it is important to segment your audience (i.e., divide the audience into smaller groups based on pertinent characteristics) so that you can target your communications and increase the likelihood that the audience will respond to the message. Potential audiences you may want to reach with your communication include youth participants, youth nonparticipants, family members, local community members, school administrators, school faculty, program volunteers, partner agencies, funders, school board members, government officials, area colleges and universities, local businesses, faith communities, retired citizens, and the media. Do not feel that you need to create a targeted communication approach for every potential audience from Day 1. Instead, consider the primary mission and goals of your program and base your early communication strategy on these goals. To determine which audiences to target first, identify which audiences most directly influence and support or are most directly influenced by the program's mission and current goals. You also can consider which groups may influence other, more unapproachable audiences and which audiences are best reached through communication modes you already possess. Use Tool 29: Community Communication Survey to discover the communication needs of your audiences. Tool 30: Communication Log can be used in conjunction with Tool 29 to record communication activities in chronological order.

A big part of communication is appropriate messaging. As you plan your communication strategies based on your key communication goals and target audiences, you also need to think about the message you are trying to get across. To do this, you'll need to establish a concrete objective for each communication, understand the audience and delivery method so that you can create content and a format that is appropriate (use Tool 31: Communication Format Guidelines to guide your communication), put yourself in the audience member's place, and think about the specific point you want to make and create your message with that specific point in mind.

Each message you create should be designed to communicate ideas that are clear, concise, persuasive, and memorable. To ensure that this happens, offer no more than three main ideas in each communication and avoid empty words or jargon. Use language that creates a mental image that will stick with the reader and make written communication skimmable (i.e., use a reader-friendly font; leave plenty of open white space; and include headings, bullet points, quotations, graphics, and photographs with captions, if applicable). When speaking, use simple language. Be aware of the tone of your voice and enunciate your words clearly.

The media plays a big role in the way we receive information, and building relationships with the local media in your area is a great (and cost-effective) way to get the word out about your program. Building relationships with the media that are proactive, ongoing, open, and respectful may take some effort but can really pay off. Whenever and however you reach out, make sure that you frame your important points every time - even if you think you've said it 100 times before - because you have an opportunity to reach people who haven't heard from you yet.

To get the word out, you can work with the media in a number of ways. One idea is to use a news release (use Tool 32: Sample News Release as a guide) about a noteworthy event. Distribute the news release to local television, radio, newspaper, and online news sources. Follow up with phone calls a day or two after you send out the news release. Offer to work with the newspaper by submitting a letter to the editor, an op-ed, or a special article or column. Send letters to your local television station, radio, or newspaper asking them to cover an event or issue that is relevant to your program. Another good idea is to have materials ready to go that you can give to members of the media on short notice, such as fact sheets, informational handouts, and other promotional materials that provide information in a clear and compelling way for a variety of audiences. Tool 7: Tips for Developing Outreach and Marketing Materials can be a great resource as you start working on this.

Answering communication-related questions such as "Is our message reaching our intended audience?" or "Are our communication resources being well used?" can be a challenge. In fact, it can be more difficult to assess the effectiveness of your program's communication efforts than it is to evaluate other program operations. However, this challenge should not stop you from measuring the success of your communication to the extent possible. Otherwise, you will never know whether you are communicating effectively or if the resources you are using for communication could be better spent elsewhere.

The first step in assessing the effectiveness of your communication is to review your program's goals and objectives (discussed in more detail in the section on program design). Are your communication efforts helping you achieve these goals? To make your answer to this question more meaningful, it is important to establish specific measurable benchmarks, or indicators, for each goal or objective. For example, a program goal might be to increase the number of senior citizen volunteers or mentors by 50 percent. The communication strategy might include posting flyers at local senior centers to raise awareness of the program and describe the benefits of volunteering. You would measure the effectiveness of this approach by the number of senior volunteers who responded to the flyer.

Another easy way to assess the effectiveness of your communication is simply to ask your audience what they thought of the message. You can gather feedback through a formal survey, but a simple telephone call or casual conversation (What did you think about the newsletter we sent you last week?) also can be effective. For a more formal survey approach, use Tool 33: Communication Survey to measure the effectiveness of your communication.