Senior Capstone Public Relations Campaign

Senior Capstone Public Relations Campaign

Situation Analysisand Campaign Plan

By: CassidyMace

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Senior Capstone Public Relations Campaign

Situation Analysis and Campaign Plan

By: Cassidy Mace

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Senior Capstone Public Relations Campaign

Situation Analysis

Mission and Goal

Lutheran Community Services Northwest (LCS) is a human services

non-profit organization that caters to communities in Washington, Oregon,

and Idaho. The services provided include behavioral health services, family

and community support, child welfare programs, refugee and immigrant

services, senior and disability services, and crime victims services. The

overarching goal for LCS northwest, according to the home page is to expand

and grow the number of people helped by its services. By 2018, David Duea,

president and CEO of LCS would like to work with about 50 percent more

people than who they currently serve.

The Yamhill County Office in McMinnville is the LCS office that I will be

working with and the mission statement for that office is, Our Yamhill

County office is dedicated to keeping children safe and families together by

creating thriving individuals, healthy relationships and strong community

connections. The services provided at the McMinnville office include mental

health counseling programs, immigration counseling and advocacy

programs, in-home safety and reunification services, healthy relationship

programs, relief nursery, safe families for children program, family

stabilization services, and parent education classes. The services offered are

done without any concern of race, ethnicity, religious belief, gender, gender

identity, age, marital status or income amount. For this campaign I will be

focusing on the event Fiesta en La Plaza, which the LCS McMinnville office

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hosts in order to fundraise money for its immigration counseling and

advocacy program (ICAP).

External Environment

LCS Northwest is a human services non-profit organization. According

to humanservicesedu.org, Human Services are those job which provide a

Service to Society, particularly in times of crisis. The current political

stance of our president on immigration has left many minorities scarred

about what the future holds for them, their children, and the fear of being

deported. This immigration ban affects any green card holders who already

have permission to be in the United States. Many Hispanics are judged and

profiled, especially after the inauguration of Trump, and even if they have

legal status are still not treated with the respect that is deserved. On the

opposite side, Hispanics who are do not have or are unsure of their legal

status are now paralyzed by the fear of being deported and separated from

their families. Many dont know or are afraid to exercise the rights that they

still have.

The political stance of the President has also made a shift in the social

and cultural condition to this organization. Here is an example of the social

effect directed at LCS for putting on an event for possible immigrants.

February 22, LCS hosted a Know Your Rights event for anyone in the Yamhill

County who was unsure of their rights as an immigrant, everything to know

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Senior Capstone Public Relations Campaign

about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), and

preparing your family with a power of attorney and an emergency plan. This

event had a goal to serve as a save place for citizens and immigrants alike to

know and exercise rights that they already have. The morning of the event,

about three men from the McMinnville community called LCS, and voiced

their opinion of how they felt this event should not be going on, immigrants

should not be welcomed in the United States, and they would be attending

the event in order to have their voices heard. Electing a president who has

openly mocked, stereotyped, and mistreated minorities has left the public

feeling like it is appropriate to do so.

Business

A special aspect of LCS Northwest is that it is the only human services

non-profit that offers Immigration Counseling from Lincoln City to Portland.

The immigration services offered are also extremely cheaper than other

professionals or programs in the area. Immigrants already have a hard time

finding jobs that pay above minimum wage and send a majority of those

earnings back to their family. Paying costly consultation fees from other

immigration professionals can pressure immigrants into feeling like they

need to do something quick and cheap about the problem. This has resulted

in friends of ICAP clients falling victim to immigration scams posted and

shared on Facebook pages.

An external threat to this campaign will be the amount of time and

money that can be spent. Kira is a part time employee for LCS which is will

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make it difficult to get everything prepared for the event and have time to

devote to social media and promotion of the event. Also, since this is a non-

profit, money is often used and needed more in other aspects of the agency.

Target Audience

There are four publics that I will be communicating through the PR

campaign: active, aware, non-public, and latent. Active publics are people

who see the problem and are actively involved in seeking a solution to the

problem. Active publics are most likely Hispanics in the Yamhill County who

are threatened by the immigration ban. Aware publics are people who see

the problem, but are not actively seeking or participating in the solution.

This group of publics could very well also be Hispanics in area threatened by

the immigration ban, but are paralyzed by fear to do anything about it. This

group could also be non-Hispanics who do not agree with the immigration

ban, but are unsure how they could solve the problem. Non-publics are

people who are unaware of the situation at all, and latent publics are people

who are aware of the situation, but do not view it as a problem. These are

most likely members in the community who support the ban and or the ban

as no affect on them.

Campaign Plan

This campaign will be based on the situational theory of publics also

known as the theory of problem solving which was developed by James E.

Grunig. The situational theory divides publics by three categories; problem

recognition, constraint recognition, and level of involvement. Publics are also

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categorized as active, aware, non-public and or latent (Kim& Grunig, 2011).

With the current immigration ban placed by the president, Hispanics all over

the world are facing a huge problem/threat, so they need to be effectively

communicated to in order to help them find a safe solution to this problem.

Also, by hosting the fundraiser the passive publics have an easier

opportunity to get involved and help the problem.

Problem recognition is the variable in which publics are aware of the

problem. This is the difference between a non-public and a latent public, a

non-public is someone who is is not aware of the situation or problem and a

latent public is someone who is aware of the situation but does not see it as

a problem. Constraint recognition is the publics perception of their own

ability to do something about the problem. High levels of constraint mean

the public feels like the situation is out of their control and they cant do

anything about it. Level of involvement is the difference between an active

public and an aware public. An active public is someone who is aware of the

problem and actively seeking information to participate and an aware public

is someone who sees the problem, but is not actively seeking information to

be involved with issue.

Goal:

The goal of the campaign plan is to provide support and outreach for

the Lutheran Community Services Northwest (LCS) Immigration Counseling

and Advocacy Program (ICAP).

Objective 1:

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Before raising funds, LCS needs to ensure that immigrants within the

Yamhill County trust and feel comfortable with ICAP and raise problem

recognition. You cant be an active or aware public if you are not aware of

the issue. Currently, ICAP has 394 clients and we would like to see a 10

percent raise.

Strategy 1:

Use online platforms to communicate accurate information about LCS

and ICAP. This a crucial strategy because LCS has received information from

current clients of ICAP that there are immigrants in the community who have

trusted deceitful sites shared on Facebook of immigration lawyers promising

the client permanent residency status.

Tactic 1:

Create a new Immigration Counseling and Advocacy page on the LCS

Northwest website that includes trustworthy additional recourses. Currently,

the page has a list of all services that ICAP offers with a phone number and

email to contact for more information. The page should include the services

that ICAP offer plus other additional safe and reliable resources. The

immigration ban is such a huge threat to immigrants that active publics

arent looking into the authenticity of websites, wiring money to a lawyer,

and then never hearing back from said lawyer. These will include links to

trustworthy immigration lawyers in the Yamhill County, the U.S. Citizenship

and Immigration Services website, and other dependable immigration

resources.

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Tactic 2:

Use social media to post hard and soft news about the issue. The hard

news will be stories and messages more so targeted for the non-public and

latent publics. Hopefully by seeing the serious damage this ban is causing

innocent human beings will change their opinion on if this is a problem. The

soft news will be stores and messages more so targeted for the active and

aware publics. Since these publics are aware of the issue LCS will want to

also post stories of families who were impacted by ban, but were successful

in gaining citizenship to show that they too still have a chance.

Strategy 2:

Use uncontrolled media to raise awareness of LCS and ICAP in the

Yamhill County.

Tactic 1:

Use word of mouth and ask followers of LCS on Facebook to share

posts about ICAP. Then, friends of the active publics will hopefully see the

information and know it is trustworthy since their friends shared it.

Tactic 2:

Pitch a personality profile story to the News Register about a client of

LCS and how he or she got to where they are in life by using ICAP. With the

News Register publishing it, this will increase the chance of latent and non-

publics seeing it.

Objective 2:

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Raise money for LCS to keep ICAP going. The goal is to raise equal or

more than 40,000 dollars.

Strategy 3:

Host a fundraising and community building event. The event is called

Fiesta en la Plaza and the money raised will be used to help keep the cost of

ICAP much lower than other professionals or programs in the area. The

event will be targeting active and aware publics and will hopefully lower the

constraint level but increase the level of involvement to aware publics.

Tactic 4:

Pitch a press release to the News Register with information on Fiesta En

La Plaza and inviting community to attend or donate. Again, this will

hopefully be seen by all four publics.

Tactic 5:

Use direct mail to send a fundraising letter to motivate members in the

community to donate to ICAP and inform them of the upcoming event. This

letter will be sent to all current and past donors, clients, and volunteers for

LCS.

Strategy 4:

Follow up and communicate the success of the event.

Tactic 6:

Send a thank you card to all the donors and participants of the event.

Tactic 7:

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Pitch a story to the New Register with the outcome of the event and

how much money was raised.

Evaluation:

The effectiveness of the plan can be evaluated by seeing if there is a

10 percent increase in ICAP clients and if 40,000 dollars is raised at Fiesta en

la Plaza.

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References:

Kim, J., & Grunig, J. E. (2011). Problem Solving and Communicative Action: A

Situational Theory of Problem Solving. Journal Of Communication,

61(1), 120-149. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2010.01529.x

(2015). Human Services Edu: Educating To Better The lives of Others.

Humanservicesedu.org. Retrieved from

http://www.humanservicesedu.org/index.html#context/api/listings/prefi

lter

(2017). "Yamhill County Immigration Counseling & Advocacy - Lutheran

Community Services". Lcsnw.org. Retrieved from

http://www.lcsnw.org/yamhill/icap.html

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