Midstate Literacy Council

The Organization

11% of residents in Centre County, Pennsylvania cannot read the words on this page.

Mid-State Literacy Council works to change this reality by providing free and low cost literacy programming and education throughout the region. What started as one woman tutoring a friend in her car has become a network of two hundred annual volunteers who have reached thousands of local residents and immigrants working on their reading, writing, and communication skills.

The Challenge

With ambitions of increasing their donor base and expanding their annual budget, Mid-State Literacy Council wanted to rebrand their visual and online presence as well create a new marketing and communications strategy.

They applied to BrandAid, an annual event where dozens of volunteer creative and marketing professionals team up to provide a worthy nonprofit with a complete rebrand. It kicks off with a weekend of work and concludes after three subsequent months of collaboration. Mid-State Literacy was chosen for their profound service in the community and the high impact that a rebrand would offer to their organization.

To efficiently tackle this group project, the BrandAid team needed an accurate and thorough representation of the organization and its goals.

I was brought in to frame Mid-State Literacy Council’s story and establish the objectives and desired outcomes for the BrandAid rebrand.

The Solution

The first step was to address Mid-State Literacy’s need for internal definition followed by clear messaging.

1. Define “literacy” in a comprehensive and nuanced way, refusing to reduce it to “reading and writing” skills alone.

2. Articulate the Fundamental Story for the Mid-State Literacy Council.

3. Identify the “Big Dream” for the organization in the next five years.

4. Identify the Audience for the new website based on organizational objectives.

To learn this information, I designed and administered a survey to the board, key volunteers, and clients. I also conducted two interviews with the current director, Amy Wilson. Using the resulting qualitative data, I identified core moments in Mid-State Literacy’s history and present and the unifying themes between those moments, indicating current and functional definitions at the heart of the work.

“Literacy” was a word that had specific meaning within the organization.It was not limited to reading and writing. Mid-State Literacy offered services in everything from American social skills to computer knowledge to reading doctors prescriptions. The resulting ideas was as follows:

Literacy (n): the set of skills and conceptual maps that enable a person to connect and communicate with others.

I also used the survey responses to craft new mission and vision statements. These statements are both critical to a nonprofit as they are required by many funders. A vision statement tells the version of the world you wish to see. A mission statement discusses the problem in the world you wish to solve. The survey synthesis resulted in the following:

Vision: Our dream is that no one lacks literacy so everyone can access a life of safety, realized goals, and community participation.

Mission: We equip people with the skills and conceptual maps needed to connect and communicate with others.

I presented these groundwork discoveries to the BrandAid volunteers on the kick-off workday. The design and marketing teams asked questions and developed a strategy to reposition the website to serve donors. This would support Mid-State’s “Big Dream” to double their annual income and be able to fully support their full-time staff with competitive salaries.

Application

This information constructed the foundation that the e team of designers and marketers needed to create a new brand and a complete website redesign. By understanding the internal definitions and purpose for Mid-State Literacy, each team member could create pieces that coalesced into meaningful and unified whole. This ranged from digital content to print collateral alongside long term communication strategies.

Maria Barton, BrandAid project lead, noted, “The reason we were able to put together such a staggering amount of work for Mid-State Literacy was thanks to the huge effort Dana put in beforehand and on the Workday to get the strategy right.”

Ric Jones, owner of Mojo Active, said, “I was impressed with t the preparation Dana provided to the project. In my agency life, much of what she did is completed as an afterthought. Here, it offered an essential jump-start.”

Amy Wilson, Executive Director, said “Because of the expertise and strategic leadership of Dana Ray, we were able to clearly present our current story and need for service expansion. We were successfully awarded a significant grants by the Rotary and The Hamer Foundation.”