Public Relations Campaign Proposal

Habitat For Humanity:

IU Chapter
Maddy Weil, Jade Schwarting, Nicole Dent, Joan Ong, Sarah Griffin, & Katie
Allman

Table of Contents
Executive Summary
Situation Analysis
Research Plan
Research Analysis
Campaign Plan

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4-7
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9-10
11-13

Timetable

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Campaign Evaluation

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Support Documents

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Executive Summary
The overall goal for our campaign is to focus on bringing in
more volunteers to Habitat for Humanitys Indiana University
Chapter, as well as increase awareness of Habitat for Humanitys
IU affiliate. We have found through studies that the majority of
students at IU know what Habitat for Humanity is, but have never
volunteered for them or do not know that there is a Chapter at IU,
thus proving the fact that awareness needs to increase in order for
there to be a broader volunteer-base.
Through our poll that we conducted online, we determined
students awareness of the IU Chapter of Habitat for Humanity,
how much time they spend per month volunteering, and their
overall desire to volunteer for an organization on campus. We
learned that the majority of students like to hear about volunteer
opportunities through email, and when we interviewed the IU
Chapter President, we learned that they have an extremely small
email Listserv: roughly 30 students total volunteer for the IU
Chapter of Habitat. Therefore, we not only intend to increase the
number of volunteers, but the number of email addresses of
students for sending out volunteer information.
Based on our research, we learned that many of the students
were not aware of the fact that Habitat for Humanity IU Chapter
provides more volunteer opportunities than just building homes in
Bloomington. Students also said that they would be more inclined
to volunteer with Habitat if they not only received more emails
about volunteer opportunities, but also were provided with more
opportunities than just building homes. Therefore, we will hold an
awareness event that we will call Beyond Building Homes at the
Indiana Memorial Union that will inform anyone who attends
about the variety of volunteer opportunities that Habitat for
Humanitys IU Chapter has to offer.
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Situation Analysis
Habitat for Humanity is a Christian organization that has,
since 1976, worked toward their mission of creating a world where
everyone has a decent place to live. They are the 6th largest
homebuilder in the US, serving 81,399 families in 2011 with
revenue of $287.3 million. Since 1976, they have helped over 2.5
million people worldwide, and built over 500,000 homes. President
Jimmy Carter and his wife supported and participated in Habitat
for Humanity projects which helped spread awareness of the
organization throughout the nation, establishing interest and a
volunteer base. Today, the majority of Americans grow up knowing
what Habitat for Humanity is or at least recognizing the
organizations title [Appendix A].
Habitat for Humanity focuses on building decent but not lavish
homes, which generally cost around $60,000 each to build.
Depending on the house style and location, the homeowners pay
between $350 to $450 per month to live in the house. The homes are
built using only the help of volunteers, who are able to interact with
the future homeowners, as they assist in building their new home, a
process called sweat equity. Habitat ensures that homes maintain
a Green standard in terms of design and supplies used to conserve
energy. All available leftover materials are reused in future projects
to ensure efficiency and to decrease waste. The company also
benefits from its corporate partnerships being self-regulated, which
has led to more opportunities for growth and success [Appendix A].
However, because Habitat for Humanity only works through local
affiliates, their progress has been scrutinized for slow decisionmaking causing complications in raising funds and completing a
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large number of projects. Also, requiring cash payment, good credit,

and sweat equity from prospective homebuyers allows for only
roughly 10% of applicants to be accepted. Despite this narrow
range, Habitat is involved in disaster relief efforts for people
vulnerable to or affected by natural disasters. Habitat also offers
vocational training for students going abroad, and has a
Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative through local affiliates to
tend to the specific needs of different communities and
neighborhoods. They accept donations of furniture, accessories, and
building materials and have their own awareness campaign
BuiLD which raises awareness of global housing needs and
supports ending poverty.
With a full housing market recovery not expected until 2014, the
organization can greatly benefit from the nations increased need
for home building [Appendix F]. Lack of competition from similar
homebuilding organizations opens opportunities to tap into a
sparked interest in helping the housing crisis. Also, since Habitat is
a Christian organization, there will always be a large, consistent
following for the organization to rely on [Appendix A].
Habitat for Humanity is yet to expand into various markets
including college students, young adults, established volunteer
groups, and churches. Habitat has also previously taken advantage
of marketing through social media outlets such as Facebook and
Twitter grab the attention of college students and young adults.
Having a space for donations available on their website as well as
posting photos and videos contributed by volunteers also serves an
effort to establish visual presence on the Internet [Appendix A].
Another benefit to the organization is their work with the federal
government to support affordable and sustainable housing.
Government grants and federal funding allow them to consistently
develop and seek out less expensive and more durable products.
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Although winter months complicate building efforts and therefore

decrease the number of building projects and volunteer
participation opportunities, they do allow for increased donations,
and fundraising efforts to be organized [Appendix A].
Locally, Habitat for Humanity competes with a similar organization
called Timmy Global Health for funds, donations, and volunteers.
Timmy Global Health is essentially the Habitat for Humanity of
healthcare; it focuses on involving students in expanding access to
the millions without health care across the world. Their volunteer
base has a larger student density than that of Habitats, so they
stand as competition for local student support [Appendix H].
That said, even after volunteers are involved in either organization,
outside obligations account for a lack of participation. Strong
religious affiliations have also caused roadblocks for funds and
participation for Habitat; certain groups have pressured the
government to cancel grants and subsidies because they claim the
laws of separation of state and church are being violated [Appendix
G].
Other aspects of Habitats processes have sometimes caused
difficulty for the organization: They are adamant about building
from scratch, although remodeling is cheaper and more efficient.
These inflexible, basic work models have been known to limit their
ability to take on poorer areas that have fallen into disrepair, even
when better living conditions would greatly benefit the community
as a whole. Despite their current disaster relief efforts, Habitat has
been criticized for being unequipped to take on massive projects
such as hurricanes, tsunamis, tornados, and other disasters that
leave millions of people without homes each year [Appendix B].
Aside from internal problems outside aspects such as increasing
unemployment from recessions, increasing homelessness around
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the world, hyperinflation in developing countries, climate

conditions being adverse for sustainable construction, and
decreasing donors due to global financial recessions are all
threatening to the organization. [Appendix G]. Overall, Habitat for
Humanity has been successful in their organizations mission
statement to demonstrate Christian morals, focus on shelter,
advocate for affordable housing, promote dignity and hope, and
support sustainable and transformational development.

Research Plan
In order to get the most out of our research, we believe it is
important to recruit respondents from a variety of grades, genders,
and levels of familiarity with Habitat for Humanity. Our research
will focus on the IU student body by splitting them into two
different groups. We will create a poll directed at members of the
IU student body who are not involved with the IU chapter of
Habitat for Humanity. This poll will address Habitats
transparency on campus, students willingness to volunteer, and
the outlets that Habitat can use to increase their activity and
communication with the student body. We will get this poll in
circulation around the IU campus by using social media outlets like
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and OnCourse.
In addition, we will conduct one-on-one interviews with willing
members of the IU Habitat chapter to get as much information
about their values and the way they project themselves on campus.
We will ask these members questions pertaining to their member
count, their goals for the academic year and the ways in which they
recruit new members from the IU student body. We will incorporate
our poll data and interview data that we collect to find more
efficient and effective ways for the IU Habitat for Humanity
chapter to reach out to the IU student body and get more Hoosiers
involved.

Research Analysis
In the course of our research, we both confirmed some of our initial
thoughts and discovered new possible ways to reach out to the
Indiana University Community.
Our primary public is students from a variety of grade levels,
genders, levels of volunteer experience, etc. We suspected that this
particular demographic may be in want of volunteer
experience/information. After polling, this was confirmed, with the
demographic overwhelmingly (79%) reporting volunteering less
than 6 hours per month; additionally, 78% of students reported
being either unfamiliar or fairly familiar with Habitat for
Humanity itself. Hence, our group decided that an awareness
campaign that would teach students about the unique
opportunities available for them to volunteer would be best. This
also meshes well with Habitat for Humanitys plan for the winter
months. Since building is more difficult at this time of the year, the
organization generally tries to focus on raising awareness and
donations.
We will contact students about these opportunities primarily
through email and social media, because our research confirmed
that a majority of students preferred these methods of
communication to more traditional ones (47% of students wished to
be informed via email, 23% through social media).

We also plan to focus on some lesser-known volunteering

opportunities available through the organization. Aside from
construction itself, which 31% of students said they wanted to
become involved with, the main interests of students were creative
volunteering (such as photography and contributing to social
media) at 21% and joining committees (such as Public Relations,
Family Selection, Special Events and Finance) at 17%. From this
information, our group concluded that students want a more
diverse selection of volunteering opportunities, so we plan on
focusing our awareness campaign on the more unique and unknown
aspects of Habitat for Humanity.

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Campaign Plan
The focus of our public relations campaign is the IU Bloomington
chapter of Habitat for Humanity. All of the work is focused here in
Monroe County, and the campaign will reach out to IU students to
get them involved with the Monroe County chapter. There are
monthly meetings and various events where students can volunteer
their time and resources [Appendix C]. However through our
research weve discovered the success of this message to the student
body is very weak [Appendix D]. We found that 62% of students
surveyed had never volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, and
25% had not heard of the organization having an affiliate on
campus [Appendix E]. Therefore, we chose the IU student body as
our main public in order to get a higher amount of students to
become volunteers for the organization. These efforts will also raise
awareness rates on campus about the opportunities Habitat offers
beyond building.
One of the main issues we found through our research is that many
students didnt realize that Habitat offered other volunteer
opportunities outside of building houses. The surveys showed that
69% were not aware of the other options, and would prefer to
volunteer in ways other than construction. [Appendix E]
We would like to send a few related messages to our audience of IU
Bloomington students. The first is that its easy to start
volunteering with Habitat for Humanity. Theres no fee to join the
club, all that is needed is a commitment to volunteering ones time
doing whatever type of work is needed. The second message we
would like to send is that volunteering with Habitat is beyond just
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building houses. While building houses is a large part of what

Habitat for Humanity does, the organization needs volunteers for
so much more. This includes creative work like website design,
social media and photography, and also donation programs for food
and money. The Habitat for Humanity chapter on IU Bloomingtons
campus is not getting the word out about all of the other volunteer
options to its audience. Many of the respondents to our survey
expressed that they would be much more inclined to volunteer with
Habitat if they were able to use their talents and donate their time
in ways other than physical labor.
Through our research, we also discovered that most people
preferred the idea of an awareness event in order to become more
informed about Habitat for Humanity. [Appendix E] Therefore we
decided to tailor such an event to the student body in order to
increase interest and knowledge about the organization. Wed like
to communicate these messages to our audience with one large
awareness event called Beyond Building Homes. This would be a
free awareness fair in the Indiana Memorial Union, with only an
email sign-up requested for entry. Inside the fair there would be
multiple stations set up, one station per volunteer opportunity that
the organization offers for students. This would allow for a visual
representation of the different ways one can volunteer for Habitat.
Furthermore, each station would include an email sign-up for more
information for that particular opportunity. Each student who
signed up would also get placed in a raffle for a gift card to a local
restaurant as an incentive to learn more about the organization and
hopefully increase volunteer numbers.
We are focusing on email sign-ups because according to our data,
47% of students surveyed preferred to be contacted via email versus
other outlets like social media, posters, signs and word of mouth.
Therefore, we need to focus on increasing our email list and
creating a Listserv to keep our potential volunteers updated on
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Habitats upcoming volunteer opportunities. [Appendix E]

We are going to advertise for this event through many different
channels. First, through our secondary research, we discovered that
Habitat for Humanity at IU has a social media presence, but it is
fairly unknown to the campus community. Therefore, we would like
to spread the word about the Facebook for Habitat page as a means
of reaching out to our publics and getting them more involved.
Twenty-three percent of our respondents said that they would like
to hear about IUs Habitat chapter from social media, therefore we
would like to reach out to that 23% and rely on the snowball effect
to generate an interest on Facebook and Twitter.
Furthermore, we would chalk and use signs around campus, which
are not extremely effective, but 10% of students surveyed said they
would like to be informed in that way. [Appendix E] With such low
cost, it would be worth it to invest the time. Finally, we would reach
out via email to other organizations on campus including the Greek
community, Indiana University Student Foundation, Indiana
University Student Association, Indiana University Dance
Marathon and other large student-run organizations. By
forwarding volunteer opportunities via email, Habitats message
can reach a large number of students who will spread the word and
increase the chances of getting more student volunteers involved
with Habitat for Humanity in Monroe County.

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Timetable

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Campaign Evaluation
Our main objective for our Habitat for Humanity campaign is to
spread the message that there are opportunities with Habitat
beyond construction. Additionally, we would like to increase the
number of volunteers, both in construction and elsewhere. Our
main medium through which we will promote the organization and
the Beyond Building Homes event is social media. We will measure
the success of the Facebook page and Twitter profile based on the
number of likes, shares, follows, retweets, and favorites.
These numbers will indicate how well the message is being received
by the public, as well as what types of information they find most
useful. At the Beyond Building Homes event, since we will offer the
chance to sign up to receive information via email from each chosen
volunteer opportunity through Habitat, we will compare the
number of students on the email list with the number of students
who volunteer. We also plan to offer an optional exit survey that
asks students how they heard about the Beyond Building Homes
event, so we can use that information to improve communication for
future events.
Through both social media and the event, the most important
indicator of success is the number of new volunteers for IUs
Habitat Chapter. We plan to review the Facebook page and Twitter
profile immediately after Beyond Building Homes, after a period of
six months, as well as a year after the event, to see how much
interaction occurs between the IU student body and IU Habitats
social media. Additionally, we will compare the number of current
members with the number of new members after a period of one
month, six months, and one year, to see the results of our campaign
efforts. If the Beyond Building Homes event and social media usage
goes as planned, we hope to double the number of new volunteers
after one year.
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Support Documents

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APPENDIX A

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APPENDIX B

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APPENDIX C

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APPENDIX D

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APPENDIX E

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APPENDIX F

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APPENDIX G

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APPENDIX H

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