500 Miles for Mental Health is a nonprofit dedicated to raising mental health awareness in adolescents from the age of eight to 18 to help children have the tools they need when they enter adulthood. The 500 miles comes from the online walk that people are able to do as a group to apply for the grant with their idea on how to help the people they are over with their mental health through physical activity. I met the head chairperson Trina Colpitts while I was on my mission. Where she asked me to help her with her Public Relations. When the opportunity came for my senior project I reached out to her to see if that was something she still wanted and she was ecstatic.
We met weekly and discussed the different things that were needed which was more consistent posts on her social media and to help with raising brand awareness. With this information I did a deep dive on her social medias looking into the engagement and started compiling a spreadsheet and doing research on nonprofit social media account.
From her Facebook I was able to see that she had an average of 24 likes per post and that they mainly came from infographics and grant winner announcements. Which was the same for her Instagram posts and stories.
From this information Trina and I came up with the idea to do infographics which led to us discussing doing Did you know posts about mental health and how it affects children and adolescents. We ended up discussing doing 30 different posts and went through a trial round of 10 but first more research was needed. What colors do other nonprofits use? What does their social media look like? And what facts were needed to make these posts effective?
Will the color pallette that 500 miles for Mental Health uses of orange, yellow and coral we were starting in a good spot because this was an importance cause so it does require urgency, we are friendly and optimistic and want to help as many people as possible. Now it was time to get working on these posts.
We then came up with a content calendar to help figure out when these posts should go out that would be most effective. From research Tuesdays and Thursdays were the best days to post for the highest rate of engagement. As well that videos did well and we discussed doing a why we walk to help the audience get to know the nonprofit better. Here is an example of one of those.
A simple 30 second video to show that this cause is personal to those that work towards this goal and it allows for the audience to feel like they have someone to relate to.
Trina Colpitts goes to different schools to help raise awareness about the foundation and mental health because as we learned earlier it is something that affects children as young as three years old. I compiled a list of about 20 schools that she would be able to go to. That we would be able to send her newly created media kit to, to see if they would be willing to host her. Here is that newly created media kit.
Through this senior project I was able to learn so much and know these skills of working with a client even that is a friend will help me so much in the long run. That this back and forth with having an open line of communication is so needed and that it allows for us to handle these goals to the fullest degree. Working with nonprofits is something that will become very normal to me as I go and work with different agency and as I have worked with this one it is now something that I have become passionate about and I know how important that is for working with nonprofits. I am so grateful for this opportunity and there are definitely things I would go back and do differently if I had to do it again but I know that it worked out how it was supposed to in the end. If you would like to learn more about 500 Miles for Mental Health click the link and join the walk for yourself https://500milesformentalhealth.com/ .