Community Challenge Plan

Introduction:

As diverse and widespread as our GLBT community is, it remains a very accessible, supportive and powerful community. One of the most effective ways to reach our target market is through the massive GLBT community network.

The GLBT community network includes dozens of non-profit organizations, hundreds of businesses and many promoters. Our campaign will strive for cooperation with all of the above-mentioned, on deferent levels.

As much as we would love to purchase presence and participation with all the organizations, that option will be impossible due to a very limited budget. Our Community Challenge will nurture and feed off the common thread, a common positive goal and a common desire across the board: to reduce tobacco usage in the GLBT community.

The Vancouver GLBT Community Challenge:

The Challenge is to reduce tobacco in the Vancouver GLBT community by 1.25% by April 2006.

We are certain that most organizations will want to support this effort in theory, and will probably allow us to promote our cause via some existing networks. In order for the various organizations to be truly motivated and active participants we will provide an incentive element, a fun factor and a real challenge that could only be accomplished by a combined community effort.

The incentive:

In order to encourage community Organizations to partner and promote the "Proud To Quit" GLBT Community challenges, we will create a partnership agreement (see details at the end of this document). The partnership agreement will outline our expectations from a partner organization by way of promoting the community challenge via their networks. All community partners will be listed and linked to our website and will be an eligible participant in the annual draw, if we accomplish the challenge. The prize will be a $2500 advertising fund, an organization profile and photo (of the board of directors) in one of our media partners publications, and more!

The promotion:

This challenge will initially be publicized through our PR and Publicity plan and then further through our partner community organization’s networks and websites.

We will want to work with as many organizations as possible and the Campaign Manager will personally meet and recruit organization’s support and participation.

The winners:
This community challenge provides many benefits and EVERYONE wins:

• A unique campaign initiative that will draw media attention and media follow-up
• Community organizations will be motivated to promote
• Community individuals will be motivated to participate
• Increased chances of accomplishing our goals

The Supporting Research:
This community challenge will be possible thanks to a highly professional and scientific evaluation and research project that will measure the smoking rates in our GLBT community at the outset of the project and monitor the accurate annual tobacco reduction rate. We will establish the smoking rate at the outset of the campaign, for now determined as "X". By March 31, 06 we will have a final evaluation that will determine the smoking rates in the Vancouver GLBT community.

The partnership plan:

As mentioned earlier, we will be targeting the Community Organizations, GLBT and GLBT Friendly Businesses and GLBT promoter teams.

Obviously, we are assuming that a certain degree of care and support for this highly important community cause does exist and it will provide the leverage and a foundation for partnerships and good relationships.

Community Organizations:
Community Organization partnership will include:

• Logo/Links exchange on website
• Organization commitment: Inclusion of the Community Challenge info on their website, in newsletters, and email blasts to subscribers (any format benefits our cause: article, images, interview etc)
• Proud To Quit commitment: Inclusion of the partner Organization in the grand prize draw.
• Proud To Quit will purchase an outreach table at Organizations annual festivals/events/tradeshows
• Any community organization that produces an annual publication with a circulation of 20,000 or more will be included in our media-buying plan!

Partnering Businesses:

We will strive to partner with many community bars, clubs, cafes, restaurants, health business, spas, etc.
These partnerships will be nurtured by our campaign providing some promotional items (match boxes, coasters and others) in return for a venue for our posters and inclusion of "Proud To Quit" in their e-mail and web promos and exposure. Logos / links exchange as well.

Community promoters:

Our community is blessed with talented special event promoters. These groups specialize in promoting and they own massive, well established networks. We will select 5 GLBT promotional groups with the largest network outreach (i.e. Flygirl, Top Of The World, TBB, Martini, GirlGig etc, Ski Week)

These relationships will require a minimal purchase of an annual sponsorship of $500 (from media budget). Our sponsorship agreement will include:

• Our Logos on all print material throughout the year
• Venue for our posters and clubcards at all their events throughout the year
• Inclusion of Proud To Quit in Email blasts and newsletters
• Outreach tables at events

Conclusions:

The community challenge is an "out of the box" approach to this pilot campaign. This pro-active activity complements the Mass Media outreach by bringing the message closer to the target market, utilizing system in place.

The community challenge is a very unique opportunity to unite the GLBT community behind one, highly important cause that we all want to change.

The community challenge will support the individual and group efforts to quit smoking and will provide a fun, interactive opportunity that will intrigue the media and the community’s interest, providing added exposure for the cause.

This unique community challange further supports this first ever Canadian GLBT Mass Media Pilot Project, by truly rooting the issue and driving it into the heart of the community. The campaign’s success will lead to future funding opportunities for GLBT tobacco reduction projects in BC and nation wide, by providing solid statistical proof of effectiveness and tobacco reduction percentages.

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Click here to read a full description of the Community Challenge Plan.