Case Study: Content and Comms for Non-Profit Organisation

Content & Comms for Non-profit

I have had the pleasure of working with ShefFood since 2021. Sheffield’s food partnership is a non-profit organisation that is spearheading the growth of a sustainable food system in Sheffield. They needed someone to take over their comms and marketing strategy to help grow their reach and support both partner organisations and the public as a whole. After winning the Bronze Sustainable Food Places Award for Sheffield, the next goal was to claim the Silver. The comms would be a vital part of the success.

Challenges

The key challenges for ShefFood were its small audience and reach within the city; it needed to be a city-wide brand. The difficulty for the comms side was that ShefFood needed support in many areas, including content for newspapers and online, social media management, email comms and overall strategy, all on a limited budget.

Suggested Solutions

Our main suggestion was to build the comms strategy around the six key areas of the Sustainable Food Places guidelines. Not only would this provide an outline for marketing, but it would also help align our strategy with the work needed to achieve the Silver award. Another key area to ensure the budget was spent most efficiently was to ensure that all content did double duty, with articles being edited and posted in several places, broken down for social media and reused for the email newsletter as well.

Implementation

As this has been an ongoing relationship, we’ve continually developed and honed the strategy over the past 18 months with ShefFood’s coordination team.

Initially, the main focus was to create a consistent stream of comms for Sheffield’s local population. Concentrating on promoting the purpose and work of ShefFood, elevating partner organisations and providing helpful information on food and sustainability. I produced 3 to 4 articles a month, maintained social posting on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and consistently put out an email newsletter every month full of articles, the latest research, events, job postings and much more.

As ShefFood and its partner organisations took part in projects and research, we were able to use this information as the basis of much of our content. For example, in collaboration with Regather and the University of Sheffield, 8 students undertook research projects focused on local food, farming, health and sustainability. These reports laid the basis for countless articles, infographics and social posts throughout the year. Access to this work and my own research ensured there was always a consistent stream of content in all our comms outlets, and we were able to plan campaigns up to 7 months ahead. This grew both the website’s traffic and the organisation’s online reach.

The organisation itself has grown and, in the last 6 months, has created a new Food Charter for Sheffield, signed up over 50 new partners and is well on its way to helping Sheffield win the Silver Award for Sustainable Food Places. These changes mean our strategy has shifted once again to focus on where the organisation needs. One of the key missions of ShefFood is to promote the awesome work of its partner organisations, so our strategy for 2023 has focused on promoting these organisations, providing more resources on the website for partners and the public and promoting our own events to drive food forward in Sheffield.