Most FLFs are not super comfortable in communicating with the media and the press. But luckily we tend to be based in institutions that are well versed in comms. Engage with your organisations communications teams early, and plan a communications strategy. If multiple organisations are uniting within your centre you will need to engage all the appropriate communications teams. It is good to discuss who will lead the communications around the launch and who they will engage with to avoid any overlapping efforts.
Your communication strategy will need to focus on two audiences: internal and external. Your first goal is to make sure enough people come to your launch. You may wish to engage communications teams¬ to help with this effort, or you may feel it’s not necessary. At a minimum your launch event needs to be included in multiple internal email newsletters for each major organisation that is part of your new centre. In our case this meant identifying people at 2 universities, a medical school, and within the NHS who had appropriate email list to include announcement of our launch event. You will want to do this in addition to personally inviting everyone you want to attend.
The audience for your launch event may be entirely internal or you may wish some members of the community, public or other external stakeholders to attend. Once again, work with your communications team to design a strategy around this.
The second phase of your communication strategy addresses announcing the new centres existence to a broad audience. Once again, think about the objectives of your centre including who you want involved, who you might want to raise money from, and who might benefit from the work of the centre. For us this included cancer patients, local businesses, policy makers, and anyone affected by cancer (which is almost everyone). As a result, we worked with our communications office to put out a press release to local TV, radio, and newspapers. If the press pick up any of these press releases you need to be prepared to respond quickly. We found ourselves jumping on Zoom calls with local news with 1 hour notice, and arranging short-notice visits from local radio. When you get those calls think about the 1-3 things you want to get across because time will be short:
- What is the new centre?
- How do you want people to engage (donate, visit a website, etc)?