Elizabeth Heffner

Hope Haven:

Social Media Plan

Background Information

This plan is designed to improve the social media and strategic communication for Hope Haven, Inc., also referred to as Hope Haven. Located on North Tryon Street, The Villages of Hope Haven is well known for its impact in the community. According to the organization’s website, the former motel used to be a hotbed of criminal activity in the early 1990s. Now, the property is used to transform lives. The 11.6-acre property consists of a “17,500 square foot conference center, 206 housing units, administrative space, chapel, commercial greenhouse, an on-site commercial laundry, a commercial kitchen and dining area, and meeting rooms” (Hope Haven, “About Us” Facebook).

According to the organization’s old website in 2017, Hope Haven was founded in 1976 by Arietta Black and Alice Trotter, two women who struggled with alcohol and drug addiction. Black and Trotter, both concerned by the lack of residential services available for female alcoholics in early recovery, asked Lance, Inc. for a seed grant after walking door-to-door to collect signatures of support for residential women’s services. Using those funds, Hope Haven leased its first home to five women. According to former Hope Haven, Inc. CEO and President Alice Harrison, in 2017, the facility averaged about 200 residents, male, female, and children at any given time (A. Harrison, personal communication, May 2017). There are seven criteria that a person must meet to be accepted into the program, with the most important one being that they want to make the commitment for at least six months to be in the program (A. Harrison, personal communication, May 2017).

Hope Haven is considered transitional housing. Residents must complete a substance abuse treatment program first before they can be admitted into the Hope Haven program (A. Harrison, personal communication, May 2017). During their stay, program participants learn life skills and how to use the tools of recovery so that they can remain in recovery and be independent, responsible citizens when they leave (A. Harrison, personal communication, May 2017). Hope Haven has contracts with Mecklenburg, Cabarrus, and 12 other counties under Cardinal Innovations, a Manage Care Organization that oversees a number of different counties in the area (C. Baker, personal communication, June 28, 2021).

This non-profit community went through difficult changes, starting in 2017, due to funding. The City of Charlotte wanted to put funding into a housing-first model; they wanted to help those by prioritizing funding to permanent housing. Hope Haven lost a significant amount of funding because of that. Harrison (who was the CEO and president for 20+ years), decided to retire that same year (C. Baker, personal communication, June 28, 2021).

Around 2018, the Board of Directors implemented a financial recovery plan. The plan took one year instead of three years. Hope Haven came close to closing; they had to stop capital repairs and cut salaries and benefits (C. Baker, personal communication, June 28, 2021). Despite this, Hope Haven survived, and last summer, the organization brought in Kristin Blinson and Christy Baker from the Charlotte Rescue Mission. Charlotte Rescue Mission has partnered with Hope Haven for several years (C. Baker, personal communication, June 28, 2021).

Brand Voice

Hope Haven has created a unique way to reach its targeted audience. Throughout their posts, they want to welcome new and old donors to come to their facility. Creating this welcoming environment allows them to show what is going on at their facility in a way that will attract more people. When using the welcoming brand voice, they promote their community with passion and great times. When Hope Haven shares their events and service products, it shows the positivity and fun that they have; even though the residents have addiction(s), they prove that you can still come together for recovery through their community.

Below are examples of how Hope Haven creates their brand voice by sharing the things happening within the Hope Havens team and volunteers. Seeing how the community is coming together shows the welcoming and community feel that Hope Haven is proud to have. Showing the team coming together to come up with changes shows their passion for the organization. Through emojis, Hope Haven creates a fun environment where people can be themselves.

Vision and Mission

According to its website home page, “Hope Haven Inc., a foundation of recovery, provides life skills for chemically dependent adults and families within a supportive residential environment leading to independence” (Hope Haven, “Homepage,” 2021). Hope Haven has tweaked their mission to emphasize that “Recovery is possible.” They are currently building the new landing page to reflect that. They are also planning on highlighting the organization’s uniqueness. It is one of the only licensed therapeutic communities that allows single fathers and their children as well as single mothers and their children to live together on-site. Addiction impacts the whole family, and they want to allow families to stay intact during this transitional residential program (C. Baker, personal communication, 2021).

Environmental Scan Analysis

Economic Factors

Hope Haven has had setbacks since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the lack of resources, they had to let go of many employees and have found many hardships. Since the pandemic, they had to lay off their Volunteer Coordinator due to budgetary restrictions. This has set them back from volunteer involvement and volunteer outreach. According to their social media, they are trying to find multiple employees in different positions. Some positions they are trying to fill include a children’s counselor, catering supervisor, food truck manager, administrative assistant, and part-time kitchen help (Facebook, 2021). Since the loss of employees, Baker, Director of Development, has had to wear many hats, making it hard to work on each task at hand fully.

Community Factors

Hope Haven runs off community factors to bring in volunteers and donations. Hope Haven shows its audience their passion for the community by sharing pictures from their donors from local organizations. This will help their donors to want to help again but also promote donations from other sources. They also share the updates to the Hope Haven property that the residents will use. Hope Haven lets the community into their updates; it shows the progress and passion they have for the organization.

Hope Haven takes pride in its community and how its organization started. On March 30th, Hope Haven posted a picture of the women that founded the foundation in 1976 (Facebook, 2021). This gives followers information on the organization and shows the community that they are not a corporate operation but local to the audience's area.

Client or Company in Focus

At Hope Haven, the key players are Christy Baker, Director of Development, and Kristin Blinson, CEO. Social media is managed at this local level; it is not outsourced. Blinson has a BA in English from Davidson College, where she graduated in 1985 (Blinson, “Linkedin profile”). However, Baker’s educational background is unknown, and she mentioned that in her interview, her social media experience is somewhat limited and self-taught (C. Baker, personal communication, 2021). Overall, it is somewhat hard to analyze due to the lack of staff.

At this time, Baker said they are unable to pay for advertisements and are promoted by word-of-mouth. She is wanting to do a series like Humans of New York where she will share quotes from the participants (anonymously) and use an unidentifiable photo. This could become very popular and draw attention with a social media platform like Instagram, and it would help create storytelling with a purpose (C. Baker, personal communication, June 28, 2021).

Social Media Communication Audit

According to Baker, Twitter has been the hardest account to use and has the least interaction. It seems to be only other organizations following them, and she wants this to change (C. Baker, personal communication, June 28, 2021). Baker is currently trying to figure out how to address the issue of different email addresses on each social media page. In addition, the Facebook page that was originally created for the organization was tied to someone else’s personal Facebook account. She wants to change it from Hope Haven CLT to Hope Haven Inc to match the other accounts (C. Baker, personal communication, June 28, 2021).

Understandably, Instagram is popular with the younger generations, Facebook with the older generations, and LinkedIn is popular with organizations and other professionals. According to Baker, the trustees board is wanting to do more on LinkedIn, but from the interview, it seems like Baker knows that Instagram and Facebook are also very important for bringing out the company’s storytelling (C. Baker, personal communication, June 28, 2021).

Situational Analysis

Hope Haven has a great understanding of what needs to be done to improve its social media presence. Due to COVID, they have been short-staffed and have not had people to run social media entirely. A few critical situations could be fixed that could Hope Haven get more followers, volunteers, and donors.

• · Be more active on social media.

o Posts more frequently on all social media sites.

o Provide the same content on each social media site.

• · Update bio to let people know who they are.

o “Recovery is Possible” shows what Hope Haven is about. They should add more so people know that it is a resource when looking at the page.

o Promote all social media accounts in the bio of each social media page.

• · Budget

o More events will lead to more money.

o Reach out to local businesses and see if they would be willing to sponsor Hope Haven.

• § Promote sponsors on all social media sites and the Hope Haven website.

SWOT

	Strengths	Weaknesses	Opportunity	Threats
Main Website	Working to improve their website. Demonstrates multiple families, age groups, and races through pictures on the front page. Has number and email for contact. Lists local organizations that they work with.	Has a list of organizations that they work with but do not mention if they are resources or donors. Only have two options on drop-down. (Home and Donate) “Subscribe for Updates” resource is not working. Does not have a spot for upcoming events.	Update website with more drop-down options. Create a blog where new updates are shared. Make a list of donors on the donation page. Add numbers for hotlines outside of Hope Haven. Provide pictures of service projects.	Main threats to all accounts, the main website and social media, are the environmental effects of COVID-19. During these times, they have had to let go of employees, so it has created a lack of social media involvement. This has led to a lack of increased followers. This has also affected the number of events that they can have.
Facebook	Allows people to pick them as their organization of choice for people to donate to on their birthday. Provides a review section so people can see the public's comments. Represents local involvement through their posts. Thank you posts for volunteers. Provides pictures of people that have donated or helped in some way. Drop down menu for events, videos, community involvement, and fundraisers. Facebook events and lives are still available to watch.	Contact is not the same as the main website. No reviews since 2018. 5 out of 5 rating is based on 11 people’s reviews. Past events do not have many people interested. Not many people marked that they are going. Only one post about an event coming up. Not much advertisement.
Instagram	Provides all contact information. Easy link to donate and does not reroute to new page. Posts match posts on Facebook.	Bio is bland. “Recovery is Possible”. Does not promote other social media accounts. Promotes a different email. No interaction with followers. Eight weeks ago, two comments were made, and Hope Haven only liked one.	Bio needs more information about the Charlotte Hope Haven branch. Add links to other social media accounts. Comment back to followers.
Twitter	Has link of main website.	Bio does not mention recovery or purpose of Hope Haven. Does not promote other social media accounts. Posts do not match other social media sites and do not post as frequently.	Create a purpose statement that can be found on all social media accounts. Bio is different from the rest. Post consistently to increase followers and make a united front across all accounts. Promote all social media accounts. Make interactive posts so people can go to volunteer or donate.

Goals

To excel, Hope Haven needs to bring on more team members to organize and create content for their social media channels and digital content. While this could be done with hiring full-time employees, the organization could also partner with a university like Queens University of Charlotte that has MA Communication students and create part-time internships. Baker had expressed interest in finding graduate students who would be interested in partnering with the organization in this way; however, she was unsure as to who to contact and how to create the internship to meet class credit requirements (C. Baker, personal communication, June 28, 2021).

For the time being, for Baker to achieve the most success in social media strategy and development, it would be beneficial for her to gain a greater understanding of social media and how to reach a greater audience. Hubspot Academy offers a free Social Media Marketing Course, designed to “...shape the conversation around your business, build loyalty, and attract new customers and partners” (Hubspot Academy, “Social Media Marketing Course,” 2021). Because it is free, this would not impact the proposed budget outside of the time Baker would need to complete the course.

It would be incredibly beneficial to find a way to bring in more money for a budget; this would allow for more events and better advertisements to reach a greater audience base, and in turn find more volunteers and increase donations.

Objectives

The objectives are threefold: (1) cultivating greater community involvement; (2) creating more engagement and awareness with social media audience(s); and (3) obtaining more comment engagement and followers on these social media accounts.

Key Audience Members

For this plan to be successful, there needs to be a mixture of older and younger populations as well as organizations. Those in the younger generations may be more inclined to donate their time in volunteer work, while older generations are more inclined to donate monetarily. In addition, other organizations are appealing because they are capable of donating money or services. Based on Hope Haven’s social media accounts, there is a small mixture of all three categories. Ultimately, the main audience is any member in the community because anyone, in theory, can assist this organization.

Strategies and Tactics

To create a presence online, it can be extremely beneficial to create specific hashtags for not only the organization, but the organization’s events themselves. This creates a community among followers and an easy way to track others’ posts about Hope Haven and its events. From there, Baker and other team members can reshare the content or comment directly about the posts and stories. Another way to increase engagement and promote interaction would be by posting polls and questions. Ask their social media communities, what sort of events they would like to participate in? What sort of fundraisers would they be interested in attending?

Furthermore, it is important to reach out to the community so that they reach back. In addition, if someone comments on a post, make sure to comment back; this includes not only responses to questions, but responses to positive and potentially negative feedback. That way, community members know that they are being heard.

For many community members, social media is their main outlet for finding events. Hope Haven needs to take advantage of this opportunity by planning more events and advertising on their website as well as social media channels to increase attendance. During in-person fundraisers and events, it is essential to provide live and recorded coverage in the form of still photography and video. These digital assets can then be used not only for the website and social media accounts, but they can be used in print promotional materials and for video advertisements.

We also noticed that their social media account contacts are not the same, and it is important to create a uniform way to contact the organization. This can be done by attaching the social media accounts one by one, with a direct link to the website. From there, we would list their goals and teach all staff members how to work these accounts until a designated social media employee is hired.

Ultimately, by bringing the mission and objectives together, Hope Haven can create a solid, united front that shows what the organization stands for. Creating a motivated and action-forward, can-do environment will inspire others in the community to help with their cause(s).

Tactics Recap

§ Implement hashtags for Hope Haven posts as well as for specific Hope Haven events.

§ Capture live videos and still photography of events and fundraisers.

§ Plan more events and post on page and stories to increase attendance.

§ Promote interaction by posting polls and questions.

§ Reach out to the community so they reach back.

Evaluation

During the evaluation, we found that the Hope Haven employees have a great understanding of what needs to happen for their organization to succeed. They have plans on working on their social media involvement, but due to COVID-19, they have a staff shortage. Once they can get an entire staff, they will be able to work more effectively.

We evaluated the number of followers that said they were interested or going to an event. These events were announced on Facebook, and followers could mark if they were going or not. During this evaluation, we focused on four events: the Hope Haven Car Wash, Trunk or Treat, Hope Haven Alumni Cookout, and the Hope Haven Yard Sale.

Event	Interested	Went
Hope Haven Car Wash (Oct 3, 2020)	2	1
Trunk or Treat (Oct 25, 2019)	31	18
Hope Haven Alumni Cookout (Set 3, 2019)	23	22
Hope Haven Yard Sale (Jun 1, 2019)	25	8

Due to the lack of traction with the event posts, we suggest that Hope Haven posts more on upcoming events. They post some reminder posts but do not promote the events on all social media sites. Facebook is easy because you can create an event that reminds people of the event, but constant posts will get people to see it on their timeline. These posts should be on all social media sites, so all followers see the events. Hope Haven should see each social media follower as different people. When posting in multiple places, more people will see it.

Another factor that was evaluated was the number of followers that Hope Haven had on each social media. This shows us the number of people that can see their posts. Growing the social media followers will bring more traction to the page. Increasing followers will increase involvement with volunteers and donors.

Social Media	Followers	Average Likes Per 10 Post
Facebook	5,272	59
Instagram	1,079	187
Twitter	723	16

After evaluation, we noticed that Facebook had the most followers, but Instagram was getting more likes per 10 posts. Hope Haven has similar posts between Facebook and Instagram, but they do not post as frequently on Twitter. This could be the cause of the lack of followers and likes per 10 posts. There are posts on Twitter that cannot be found on other social media sites. They shared posts about companies donating money, but it is only found on Twitter. Furthermore, the bio information is different on Facebook than other social media sites. “Recovery is possible” is used on Instagram and Twitter but not on Facebook. Facebook also gives a complete bio on what Hope Haven does, but that is not on any other social media sites.

We suggest that Hope Haven promotes all social media sites. Hope Haven can post their names on different social media sites in the bio area so people can see where to follow them. In doing this, they should interact with their followers by commenting or doing polls for their followers to answer. They can ask about interest in events as well as seeing what their followers would be interested in. This gets people on Hope Haven’s page, but it will also show Hope Haven how many people are active and seeing their content.

Meet the Team

Kristin Blinson: CEO of Hope Haven

Christy Baker: Director of Development

Budget

During the interview with Christy, the Director of Development at Hope Haven, she mentioned that there had not been a budget to pay for advertisements since she has been in her position. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hope Haven had to let go of many employees, so their sources are low as well.

Since there is a lack of budget, we suggest that Hope Haven starts with fundraiser activities to create a change in the budget. We recommend doing things that get the residents involved, so they are active in the process as well. This can be more car washes every weekend or every other weekend, raffle tickets for a basket of prizes, or a community cookout where people can come to enjoy the weather. Hope Haven could reach out to local bands to see if someone would perform for the events; the band can promote the event so their followers will want to come as well. Doing events like these will grow the budget, and more can be done once the budget is increased.

Calendar

According to Christy, Hope Haven is working on its social media plan so they can support its fundraiser ideas. We suggest that they meet with the whole team to get ideas on what fundraisers would be best. Getting ideas from different departments could bring new ideas. During this time, they should talk about their goals and what needs to be done to help their organization as a whole.

This is an example of how to get started with fundraisers and events. Having a calendar is not just for events; it is for planning and setting goals to where you want the organization to be. This will get all employees and volunteers on the same page so they know who can help. Gathering people for multiple ideas will help Hope Haven in the future.

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Team Meeting- Brainstorm ideas for improvements that need to be made.	Search Fundraisers	Create full write up of budget and goals for where it needs to be	Create social media poll asking what event people would be interested in attending	Team Meeting- Discuss fundraiser ideas and see who could volunteer	Car Wash/ Resident Event
Make a plan for improvements and plan for service products.	Reach out to local businesses for help. (Entertainment for future cookout and donations for food)	Set Fundraisers- Get paperwork ready and hand information out to employees/ volunteers	Send information out to residents for fundraisers and upcoming events.	Make sure everything is set for an event and cross any T’s that need to be finished	Promote the next event on all social media

References

A Trotter, personal communication, May 2017.

C Baker, personal communication, June 28, 2021.

Hope Haven, Inc. [hopehavenclt] (30 March 2021). We can’t let Women’s History Month end without honoring these amazing women! [Image Attached] [Status Update]. Facebook.

Hope Haven, Inc. [hopehavenclt]. [Facebook profile]. Retrieved June 2021, from https:// facebook.com/hopehavenclt.

Hope Haven, Inc. [hopehaveninc]. Tweets [Twitter profile]. Retrieved June 2021, from https:// twitter.com/hopehaveninc.

Hope Haven, Inc [@hopehaveninc]. (2021), from https://instagram.com/hopehaveninc.

Hubspot Academy. (n.d.) Social Media Certification. Hubspot. https://academy.hubspot.com/courses/social-media

Kerpen, D. (2015). Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistable Brand, and Be Amazing on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and More. McGraw-Hill Education.

Kristen Blinson. (n.d.) Home [LinkedIn page]. LinkedIn. Retrieved June 28, 2021, from https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristin-kelly-blinson-cfre-045633b/