The Fresh Air Fund is continually seeking out host families, donations, and camp counselors for each summer program.  They needed a cost-effective solution to build awareness and generate interest in becoming a host family or camp counselor and to cultivate donation support.   The ultimate goal is to provide a high-quality summer experience for as many underprivileged city children as possible.

Abraham Harrison LLC proposed building widespread awareness of the Fresh Air Fund program within the blogosphere using online outreach services. Originally focusing on a tailored database of family-focused and geographical targets, AHLLC devised a new initiative in November 2009 to use blogger outreach to vastly expand the reach of the Fresh Air Fund’s public relations into new digital communities.

AHLLC’s new strategy was centered on using the successful components of our large-scale blogger outreach targeting family-focused bloggers, but finding creative ways to make the message relevant to whole new online digital communities. Focusing on the timing and content of upcoming Fresh Air Fund initiatives, the online outreach team developed messaging and Social Media News Releases ( SMNRs) to large sets of bloggers who might not otherwise appear as obvious targets for an outreach about the Fresh Air Fund’s mission

Over the course of six months, from November 2009 to May 2010, AHLLC contacted approximately 2000 bloggers each in 4 separate outreaches:

1. Vision/Blindness – to coordinate with the Fresh Air Fund’s collaboration with the partner organization OneSight
   
   
2. Runners – to coordinate with the Fresh Air Fund’s participation as a benefiting sponsoring organization in the New York City Half Marathon
   
   
3. Pet Lovers – to capitalize on the connection Fresh Air Fund kids often make with host family pets, an experience most do not get to have in their regular inner-city lives
   
   
4. Outdoors Sportsmen (Fishers, Campers, Orienteering, etc.) – to capitalize on the connection Fresh Air Fund kids make with being out in nature, often for the first time in their lives

The team discovered that the content provided to bloggers in the SMNRs could remain essentially the same as long as the message in outreach email was very specifically targeted to the unique digital community being approached. If the email message was successful in convincing pet bloggers that there was a good reason they should be interested in covering the Fresh Air Fund on their blog, the content of the SMNR could remain the same for any group of bloggers to use to learn more or to grab assets or content from for their blog posts.

Ultimately, the team wanted to familiarize new bloggers with FAF and elaborate on contextual relevance between The Fresh Air Fun program and their general blog topics. Positive responders to the outreach were referred to the SMNR to lift any copy, videos, and photos for future post and to the Fresh Air Fund Twitter and/or Facebook accounts, towards the goal of getting entirely new digital communities to become aware of the Fresh Air Fund and promote the organization through earned media mentions.

For each of the blogger outreaches, the individual contacted received an email with a short, direct message that contained a link to a social media news release (SMNR) to learn more about the Fresh Air Fund’s latest efforts. 
Successful execution of blogger outreach on this scale requires not only the right messaging, but a heavy time-investment to convert email responses from bloggers into earned media mentions. 

1. No email goes unanswered and is replied to within a matter of hours. The inbox is staffed continually for the first 72 hours after an outreach. Bloggers move on and won’t cover your story unless you respond as quickly as possible.
   
   
2. Unfaltering Persistence. We didn’t “send and forget” – every outreach was sent 3 times over the course of 3 weeks. And any response categorized as “maybe” was followed up with to convert it to an actual media mention.
   
   
3. Relationship-building. Bloggers who responded and posted are publicly thanked and also sent a direct email thank-you. Communications are designed to ensure the likelihood that the blogger will be willing to post about the Fresh Air Fund again in the future.

From November 2009 through May 2010, the Fresh Air Fund garnered a total of 1,293 earned media mentions directly related to the online outreach campaigns with an estimated minimum of 25 million impressions. Furthermore, over the same time period, the organization’s number of Twitter and Facebook followers continued to rise to 10,600 (Twitter) and 4, 615 (Facebook), impressive numbers for a small, non-national, non-profit organization.

For the first time since it began participating, the Fresh Air Fund was able to fill all 100 of its designated slots in the New York City Half-Marathon, earning the organization $100,000 in donations for that one event alone.

Here’s what Jenny Morgenthau, Executive Director of The Fresh Air Fund, has to say about the work of the Abraham Harrison team: “We have been impressed with their expertise in the industry, ability to execute a plan successfully and willingness to listen to our needs and goals. Their work has made an impact on our programs already and has given a tremendous boost to our awareness efforts.”

+1.202.570.4878 (global)
Chris Abraham, President & COO – chris.abraham@abrahamharrison.com
Mark Harrison, CEO – mark.harrison@abrahamharrison.com