Boys & Girls Clubs in Tennessee (BGCTN) are comprised of two entities, Boys & Girls Clubs Tennessee Alliance (BGCTA) and Boys & Girls Clubs in Tennessee Area Council (BGCTAC), whose mission is to facilitate communication, exchange ideas and encourage cooperative action among Tennessee Clubs. BGCTA strives to improve and expand quality youth development throughout Tennessee, promote public awareness of Club programs and problems and strengthen Club’s relationships with both public and private agencies. BGCTAC is part of an important and powerful force in the Boys & Girls Club Movement. It provides the chief medium for securing and maintaining the interest and active participation of board volunteers across Tennessee. It is frequently the channel through which ideas, suggestions and proposals flow to others across the state. BGCTN is comprised of 22 organizations, serving over 30,000 youth in Tennessee.

All marketing initiatives are contracted by Boys & Girls Clubs of the Tennessee Valley (BGCTV) who run the BGCTA and are developed and executed in-house by Boys & Girls Club of Greeneville & Greene County’s (BGCGGC) marketing team consisting of the Executive Director and the Marketing and Grants Director. This highly successful marketing team has been honored by Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) with 17 Marketing and Communication Awards over the past several years in a variety of categories. Since 2012, BGCGGC has worked, under contract, to develop a marketing plan for BGCTN and maintain its components. The contract tasked BGCGGC with development of a comprehensive communication strategy including developing statewide relationships with media, maintaining a statewide website and creating and developing marketing collateral.

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The primary goal of the marketing plan was to share the impact that BGCTN has on youth state-wide by highlighting Club’s mission-driven programs and showcasing the positive benefits youth receive at Clubs throughout the state. Achieving the goal would result in more of the target audience understanding and supporting the mission of Boys & Girls Clubs.

To achieve the primary goal, objectives were set:

Create a BGCTN newsletter that would be delivered three to four times throughout the year highlighting Club specific stories.

Maintain a social media plan for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest that promotes mission-driven messaging and photos to showcase benefits and importance of Boys & Girls Clubs across social media platforms.

Redesign 2015 BGCTN Marketing Handbook with samples from Clubs throughout the state for print and online materials, special events and fundraising, introduction to marketing and social media and much more.

Update and maintain BGCTN website, www.bgctn.org, to reflect primary goal of highlighting the mission-driven programs which Clubs are based on while also showcasing the positive benefits youth receive while attending the Club.

Create Club member focused Youth of the Year recruitment video for Clubs to use across the state to showcase to audiences one of the most positive benefits of at-tending the Club.

Create 2015 BGCTN Outcomes Report to highlight Club impact across Tennessee which can be used as marketing collateral to advertise the benefits Boys & Girls Clubs have on youth.

Create 2015 Hall of Fame program featuring notable individuals in the state and advertise the event on the Boys & Girls Clubs in Tennessee website to honor the best of the best.

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The target audience for BGCTN’s marketing strategy was two-fold. The marketing objectives were set to appeal to a range of audiences. The primary audience included those who would directly benefit from Boys & Girls Club’s programs and services such as current Club members, current parents or guardians, potential Club members and potential parents or guardians. Our objective was to center the marketing on what would engage and entice someone to join a Club in Tennessee. The secondary audience included persons who could support Clubs through financial means, time for volunteer service or power positions such as businesses, organizations, volunteers, donors or government leaders. Through the aforementioned marketing efforts, it was the hope that audiences who were novice to the Boys & Girls Club Movement would be made aware through publications, newsletters, social media, the website and other marketing collateral. Additionally, we wanted social media to engage our Millennials such as Club members, younger parents and younger donors while the website and print materials would engage Generation X and Baby Boomers like our Club’s older guardians and older donors.

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Objective 1: Create a newsletter

Strategy: To spread awareness of the positive impact Clubs have on youth, a state-wide newsletter was developed. The newsletter was distributed to all persons in the Tennessee House of Representatives and Senate, as well as internal and external audiences three times a year. It contained high profile stories across the state, such as Tennessee’s Youth of the Year competing in the top three of the Southeast Regional Youth of the Year competition. The branding of the newsletter was designed to align with BGCA’s Brand Calendar advocacy period themes. This piece served as a marketing resource to our audience, as well as an internal bulletin for Clubs to stay connected with activities happening state-wide.

Objective 2: Maintain a social media plan

Strategy: A social media plan was created to help promote mission-driven messaging and photos to showcase the benefits and importance of Boys & Girls Clubs across social media platforms. The BGCGGC marketing team showcased individual Clubs on different social media platforms by diligently looking at each Club’s social media pages to find the best story to fit each day’s needs. To ensure consistency and diversity, an excel spreadsheet was created to log each post so that each Club is mentioned on a social media account. This fluctuates due to some Clubs level of participation on social media. Efforts were made on social media accounts to align messaging around BGCA’s focus- great futures, academic success, healthy lifestyles and good character and citizenship.

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Objective 3: Update Marketing Handbook

Strategy: To ensure consistent marketing of the Boys & Girls Club brand is followed across Clubs throughout the state, the BGCGGC marketing team updated their 2013 BGCTN Marketing Handbook. The new 288 page handbook serves as both a “style guide” and “best practices” manual for Chief Professional Officers and Marketing contacts across the state. The goal was to educate and encourage Clubs on proper BGCA graphic standards while also highlighting diverse examples of creative and high quality marketing examples from Clubs across the state. The book is filled with various print, online, special event and fundraising materials, as well as annual reports, marketing strategies and BGCA initiatives. By ensuring that graphic standards are met and that Clubs have top-notch examples to follow, we are providing audiences across the state with the most consistent and high quality information they need to choose BGCTN as their go-to youth development organization.

Objective 4: Update and maintain website

Strategy: To reflect the goal of highlighting mission-driven programs while also showcasing the positive benefits youth receive while attending the Club, it was important for the marketing plan to focus on updating and maintain the BGCTN website, www.bgctn.org. Stories were featured from Clubs on a dynamic home page with recent news articles rotating on the top section of the page. A navigation bar made it easy for target audiences to have full access to BGCA programs and outcomes, while also promoting what Clubs have to offer. Objective 5: Create Youth of the Year video

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Objective 5: Create Youth of the Year video

Strategy: A kid focused Youth of the Year video was created to continue to appeal to our primary audience – (potential) Club members and their families. To start this process a marketing meeting was held to craft the focus of the vision of this kid-centered video. It was determined to focus on the fun and prestige that the Youth of the Year experience is. It would follow youth during the three day event, highlighting the most passionate moments to evoke emotional reactions. This marketing tool appeals to both our primary and secondary audience as an excellent medium to increase support of all types, i.e. enrollment, financial and time. The video was planned, filmed and executed by the BGCGGC marketing team.

Objective 6: Create Youth Outcomes Report

Strategy: A 2015 Youth Outcomes Report was created to distribute to our secondary audience. This collateral would achieve our goal of sharing the positive impact and the important roles that Clubs across Tennessee play in the lives of our youth. A theme of Boys & Girls Club pantone blue was chosen accented by square shapes and impactful photos. The report included photos from Clubs to highlight the impactful programs and activities that youth engage in each day. Additionally, National Youth Outcomes Initiative Data for Tennessee was also noted in the report to give a detailed picture of the positive impacts that the Boys & Girls Club makes in a child’s life. This marketing piece had a clear vision to tell the benefits and statistical data of Clubs across the state in a visually appealing and dynamic manner.

Objective 7: Hall of Fame

Strategy: A 2015 Hall of Fame program was created to honor individuals who have made lasting impacts on Boys & Girls Clubs across the state. The website also honored these individuals by showing their impact on their own page.

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Through our marketing efforts, BGCTN was successful in sharing the impact that Clubs have on youth throughout the state by highlighting the mission-driven programs while also showcasing the positive benefits youth receive.

When the objectives and tactics were evaluated and their content brought to fruition, it was clear that the overall marketing goal was achieved. Through the establishment of a newsletter, successful maintenance of social media accounts, transforming outdated marketing handbook, updating and maintenance of the BGCTN website, creation of a Youth of the Year video and development of a youth outcomes report the important roles and positive impact Clubs have across the state have been brought to life. Through these efforts we are not only telling but showing our target audiences in Ten-nessee the benefit of Boys & Girls Clubs across the Volunteer State.

To evaluate the success of the BGCTN marketing plan, quantitative and qualitative methods were used.

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Quantitatively we recorded the impact of the newsletter. The email marketing service used to create this collateral was “Emma”. The newsletter was sent to individuals in the Tennessee House of Representatives and Senate and internal and external BGCTN audiences. We compared our mailing statistics to the average to observe how we ranked with community standards. According to Emma the average mailing score for this service was a “7” out of “10”, our first newsletter “Spring Into Great Futures” received a mailing score of “8.1”. The following statistics provided are according to MailChimp, an email marketing service similar to Emma. The average open rate for non-profits is 25.45%, our open rate was 39%. The average click rate for non-profits is 2.90%, our click rate was 8%. The second newsletter, “Celebrate Great Futures” re-ceived a mailing score of “9” with an open rate of 40% and a 7% click rate. The third newsletter, “Kickoff Great Futures” mailing score was “8.7” with an open rate of 45% and a click rate of 7%. In comparison to national non-profit averages, our newsletter has done exceptionally well. In addition to the newsletter, we observed an increase in our social media followers and fans throughout the year. While data was collected from both Facebook and Twitter analytics, Pinterest and Instagram analytics were harder to come by. Through the BGCTN marketing, there was at least an increase of 231 new followers to our accounts (missing data from Pinterest and Instagram due to lack of adequate analytical tools). A total of 62,368 Twitter impressions were made from the social media marketing plan.

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Qualitatively we observed the success of the website, marketing handbook, Youth of the Year video and outcomes report through the completion of each project and through peer and audience feedback.

“The outcomes report is an incredible tool to present to donors across the state. It’s appealing visuals and dynamic content allows for quick access of information while telling a unique story about the benefits of the Boys & Girls Club.” – Carla Bewley, CBO Nominating Committee Chairman for BGCTN

“It has always been difficult to get youth interested in competing for the Youth of the Year competition. But, this video has proved very successful in showing our kids the benefits of the competition, whether that is new friendships, new experiences or new opportunities.” – Cathy Osborne, Director of Operations and Compliance Officer for Boys & Girls Club of Greeneville & Greene County

“The marketing handbook has been a great tool for our Club’s marketing efforts. We were able to better follow BGCA graphic standards and having other [marketing] examples from Clubs gave us great ideas for our Club.” – Robyn Boshers Peery, Resource Development Director for Boys & Girls Clubs of Maury County

We also observed the more impactful posts on some of our social media accounts to show success of the mission-driven messaging and photo marketing plan. Examples of marketing collateral and social media posts are demonstrated in the supporting documents.

It is evident in the results that our BGCTN marketing was a success through the audiences we reached and through our primary goal.

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The following Supporting Documentation is included:

Print outs of the three Boys & Girls Clubs in Tennessee Newsletters: Spring Into Great Futures, Celebrate Great Futures and Kick Off Great Futures

Photos of social media posts and example of social media tracker

Copy of the 2015 Marketing Handbook

Photos of articles posted to Boys & Girls Clubs in Tennessee website, www.bgctn.org, and photos of the website in general

Copy of 2015 Youth Outcomes Report

CD of Youth of the Year Video. To view the video on YouTube visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbnJQWnC8Q0

Copy of Youth of the Year Sponsorship Packet

Copy of 2015 Hall of Fame program

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The following items are included in the State Alliance/Area Council Marketing submission as separate documents:

Print outs of the three Boys & Girls Clubs in Tennessee Newsletters Spring Into Great Futures, Celebrate Great Futures and Kick Off Great Futures

A copy of the 2015 Boys & Girls Clubs in Tennessee Marketing Handbook

A copy of the 2015 Boys & Girls Clubs in Tennessee Outcomes Report

A copy of the Youth of the Year Sponsorship Packet

A CD of the Youth of the Year video

A copy of the 2015 Hall of Fame program

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Separate Documents

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Supporting Documentation

Social Media Tracker

Supporting Documentation

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Facebook Posts

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Supporting Documentation

Twitter Posts

Supporting Documentation

Instagram Posts

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Supporting Documentation

Website Photos

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Supporting Documentation

Website Hall of Fame Photos

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