Communications Strategy + Campaign Planning

Define the Goal and the Audience

I begin by identifying the change the organization needs to create and the audience whose response would make it real. The goal and the audience are defined together: once I know what response matters, I can clarify who needs to respond and what would make that action meaningful to them.

From there, I work backward. Is this audience already in the organization’s network, or does the relationship need to be built? Where do these people receive information? Which sources do they trust? How do they expect the invitation to look and feel? The answers shape the message, visual language, schedule, channel mix, budget, and measures of response.

The same logic shapes my curatorial practice: the form of an exhibition, its interpretation, its programming, and its invitation all depend on how an audience will enter the material.

Research and Build the Audience

When the audience is not already in network, I research the communities, institutions, and trusted connectors that share the program’s underlying values. For InLiquid’s 40PNPB, which engaged ecological concerns, I mapped environmental groups at Penn, Drexel, Temple, and other universities alongside regional advocacy organizations, creek associations, public-space nonprofits, and philanthropists who supported environmental causes.

I introduced myself, explained the shared value behind the outreach, and provided material that institutions, community groups, partners, and media networks could share with their own members and listservs. Each trusted group could amplify the message through a distinct community, turning one thoughtful relationship into access to a much wider—but still relevant—audience. This research-and-relationship approach is developed further in Audience Development + Growth.

AI-assisted research now helps me discover, enrich, and organize prospective contacts at a scale that would otherwise consume substantial staff time. Human judgment remains responsible for defining what is relevant, checking accuracy, deciding who should be contacted, and writing the relationship-building outreach. The automation supports the thinking; it does not replace it.

Assign Each Channel a Job

I have planned campaigns across books and publications, print advertisements, billboards, postcards, flyers, takeaways, direct mail, email, press, partner distribution, and social media—both paid and organic. Newsletter lists can be segmented so established supporters, recent participants, business owners, donors, and new prospects receive messages appropriate to their relationship with the organization. My writing and publication work extends this thinking into longer-form print and interpretive formats.

A channel’s job changes with the audience and desired response. Social media might reflect community life and invite conversation for residents, introduce a program through paid discovery for new visitors, or remind likely participants that registration is closing. A newsletter can organize shared information for an established community or provide the detail that helps a known audience complete an RSVP or purchase. Press and partners can transfer trust into a new network, while place-based print can build recognition within a particular geography.

I select the mix based on audience behavior, staff capacity, budget, timing, and the value of the desired response. The question is always practical: which method gives this audience the clearest and most credible path to act?

Build the Campaign Architecture

A campaign plan holds the full system in view: audiences, messages, calls to action, channel responsibilities, timing, investment, and evidence. A connected relational database can bring contact research, segmentation, invitations, channel activity, registrations, attendance, giving, and response into the same system. I use AI-assisted collection to surface interaction rates and missing information, then compare performance with the original campaign goal. Human interpretation determines whether the strategy should change and what happens next.

Communications as Organizational Infrastructure

At the Lansdowne Economic Development Corporation (LEDC), I used this framework to connect communications with fundraising, cultural programming, small-business promotion, earned-revenue classes, and place marketing. The same underlying database could connect the people, relationships, campaign activity, and response across these areas instead of leaving each effort in a separate communications silo.

A winter holiday campaign presented Lansdowne as a shopping destination, combining business stories, shared visuals, print distribution, email, and social media. Juneteenth outreach connected the borough’s Black-owned businesses with Black-led galleries, performers, restaurant activations, and cultural experiences. Each began with a distinct goal and audience, then used the channels and trusted messengers most likely to reach them.

I planned these campaigns across their full lifecycle: defining goals and audiences; weighing budget and expected return; scheduling paid print placements, billboards where appropriate, social content, segmented newsletter placements, and dedicated news blasts; producing postcards and flyers; arranging street-level distribution and direct visits to businesses; and conducting targeted outreach to press and community groups. The Individual Giving + Annual Appeal case study shows how this infrastructure supported two coordinated fundraising campaigns.