Gift of Communication 2023

    On Wednesday, November 6th, 2023, I and several other students in the program made their way to the Hamilton Yacht Club to attend the Gift of Communication event. The International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Golden Horseshoe Chapter held the event as part of an annual holiday offering to the United Way and local community programs.

Jan Graves Begins Event

    The event aimed to assist local United Way Agencies with their current methods of communication and help them reach a tentative plan of action towards improving any identified issues. Agency representatives were partnered with two students and two IABC professionals in order to facilitate an evaluation of organizational communication habtis. The event was to be conducted over the course of three and a half hours, and would conclude with each group presenting what they had identyfied through their discussion.

    I was assigned to assist Community Development Halton (CDH), a long-standing organization that seeks to improve the quality of life for Halton residents through research, community development, planning, and promoting volunteerism. Their two attending representatives made up the entirety of the current staff so internal corporate communications were not their focus. 

Instead, they had identified two key communications issues:

1. Assistance with a clear message (what we do)
2. Messaging about the value of membership (clear a path for the organizations to engage)

CDH Team Discusses Tactics

    Through our discussion, we identified some neglected issues in terms of messaging and overall communication of noteworthy information, partially because of the organization's recent handover of leadership and ongoing restructuring. A new website was on the way with plans to launch in the new year, so one thing that was suggested was to remake the membership page to better advertise the benefits of signing up. Namely, the value of the CDH membership outside of granting access to their estensive data base. Current members were also identified as an important target audience as these organizations could work in collaberation with CDH to spread message to other potential memebers.

    Additionally, a suggestion was made to standardize the messaging of materials on both CDH socials and their new website, with more frequent posts of reminders and updates. A key issue identified in our discussion was that the social research services that CDH provides were of interest to organizations but their other services and work were going underappreciated. Utilizing more frequent social media activity was seen unanimously as the best communication tool to achieve the following goals which came up during the conference:

• Educate people on civic engagement and the benefit of engaging with their community.
• Promotion of volunteer center (people want to volunteer but may not know where to go).

Teams Present their Finding

    Following our evaluation and advice on marketing and communication strategies, each agency presented their findings of their review to the room and made mention of any key ideas that had been imparted to them today.

    

    Overall the event was an excellent experience for me, and it was a pleasure to work with true communication professionals thanks to the IABC. I feel as though my contributions were helpful in empowering CDH with a better understanding of how to achieve effective corporate communication practices. I highly suggest next year's PR class look to attend the Gift of Communication event in 2024 for both the experiences and connections offered by the event.

Mohawk Student at Gift of Communication 2023