Best Council Newsletter

Chickasaw Council
Council Classification: 400-600
Contact: Harold Keller

Objectives

Redesign our council newsletter to communicate to our clients and potential clients the image of our being a more professional local nonprofit organization.

Planning Process

We recruited a local advertising executive to serve as our vice president of public relations and gave him the responsibility of putting together a team of individuals to assist. The team was charged with the following:

• Develop a new design that would be the template for future issues.
• Publication costs should not increase from previous issues.
• All technical assistance and design support needed should be recruited without cost to the council.

Impact

A drastic change occurred which facilitated the following:

• When an organization does something wrong, there are many who will contact you to express displeasure. When an organization does something good, you rarely hear about it from the clients. This was not the case as we have received numerous communications from across our client base praising our new publication.
• Our professional staff has taken pride in the new publication and is using extra copies in their recruiting and prospect cultivation.

Learning Points

We must always be open to examining the way we communicate to determine if we are utilizing our resources in the best manner and achieving the result we desire.

There were those who said that you can't change the name or the look because people won't recognize it as being our printed communication tool. Some said don't change it because the newsletter has always been done a certain way.

Our team recommended changes and we supported their effort. We are very glad we did!

The Merits of Marketing (marketing.scouting.org) is a resource for local councils, developed by the Marketing & Communications Division of the National Council, Boy Scouts of America.