City of Galveston Recovers

Case Study: Community Outreach

Situation:

DoubleDimond Public Relations was contracted by Camp, Dresser and McKee to handle Media and Community Outreach for the City of Galveston's Disaster Recovery Housing Program – a rehabilitation program for homes damaged by Hurricane Ike.

Goal:

The City of Galveston was required to have at least 1,100 homeowner applications by February 28, 2010 – a little over two months from the project start-date.

Challenges:

  • The timeframe for achieving the goal was very short.

  • Galveston residents were hesitant to apply due to some misconceptions about the program.

  • Hispanics make up 26% of the population of Galveston Island, so outreach had to be bilingual.

    • Strategy:

    DoubleDimond planned and implemented an aggressive, highly visible outreach program with a simple message repeated throughout a mix of media coverage, collateral materials, and on-the-ground community outreach.

    Tactics:

  • Stationed a bilingual community outreach coordinator on the island.

  • Arranged for editorial board meeting with the Galveston County Daily News, which began publishing editorials, articles and a series of guest columns by community leaders encouraging people to apply.

  • Arranged for media friendly events, which attracted television coverage and radio interviews by media in both English and Spanish.

  • Produced flyers and posters in English and Spanish and distributed them throughout the island at prominent locations and through outreach events at Wal-Mart, Kroger, and other places that attracted large numbers of people.

  • Arranged for e-blasts to large groups and promotional materials that were inserted in Galveston water bills.

  • Scheduled events and presentations in churches, companies and service organizations.

  • Provided materials and other support to volunteer groups who block-walked.

  • Supplemented media coverage with ads in Galveston County Daily News and Texas City Post.

  • Kept website updated with latest news and collateral materials.

    • Results:

    In all, there were more than 50 local and regional news, feature or opinion stories – print and broadcast; 16 organizations supporting the effort with newsletters, email blasts and events; 40 events and speaking engagements; five volunteer block-walking weekends, and 130 posters at major locations throughout the region. More than 1,500 applications were received by the February 28th deadline, and hundreds continued to pour in.

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