BHF Communications Committee Meeting, Saturday, July 20, 2019

Present:

Joni Rabinowitz, Suzanne Donsky, Dan Beeton, Abby Wolensky, Brittany Sheets

Absent: Howard Scott, Anne Lynch

Program Review:

Labor in Song- good turn out: had additional outside PR from others beyond BHF – had a large environmental turnout but they had a large following before this
Environmental program: Mike and Patty had a lot of turnout from their lists
At the environmental events – there was a strong DSA following
Families separation May 4th: had a good turnout – Casa Jan Jose, Guillermo did a lot of publicity for this also
Overall – it appears to be helpful when partner groups and/or the people doing the programs do publicity for their events, to their contacts, in conjunction with us
Suggestion: have a liaison between programs and communications committees:
This person would coordinate with Program committee to get the contacts for partner groups and cross coordinate PR responsibilities to make sure things are being taken care of
Bus trip was canceled for lack of active interest.
Clarification: for Fannie Sellins its the Union Cemetery in Arnold, not the Arnold Cemetery
Suggestion: John needs a written script for event announcements-> ask about how people heard about us at the pump house events
Outreach Efforts:

Suzanne- Sending out electronic notices to publications and community boards to get the word out about our events
OnePittsburgh- does the same thing, takes the info and distributes it out to their publications
City paper has a posting place
WESA community calendar
Pittsburgh Current
Check: WYEP, Love PGH music > July is Love PGH Music Month, submit Betty Davis After Party info
Joni- Merton Calendar
Oct. 5 event:

Suzanne- taking care of The Incline to see if someone would be interested in doing a feature on the Oct.5 event.
Joni- putting in a call to Chris Potter
Abby is going to push the Oct. 5th event to her list of contacts through work – would like to get Partner for Work involved, would suggest putting them on the panel possibly, or have them in attendance at least
Look into doing this as a feature media story- highlight a recent grad or success story
look into The Incline, consider others for a feature like the Post Gazette
Maybe Chris Potter at WESA? Maybe he can hook us up with someone else who would be interested in doing a feature
The Confluence? Ask Chris if he could link us into this
Angle: How unemployment still exists despite what’s in the news, baby boomers are retiring and there’s a shortage of skilled workers but good programs training new workers.
Sun Oct. 20th event:

Engage with the JCC? Put it in the Chronicle? Who is Joe having to speak at this event?
are we equipped to handle this? Is it too controversial? Need more info from Joe White?
Betty Davis Event:

This was not clear it was a fundraiser, and some publications wouldn’t take it on Community Calendars because it is a fundraiser, considered a paid advertisement.
People thought this was a film screening not a fundraiser and did not understand the high price of the tickets.
Betty Davis attending is TBD- it’s up to her if the attends or not.
Danielle was supposed to be handling publicity and it was not understood so event was confusing and not marketed well.
In the future: have a clearer delineation of tasks and who is project managing special events in the future.
PG and WESA were pushed for interviews for this event
Dan- every month does a press release to a press list for the month’s upcoming events, reaches out to some individuals he knows based on beats he knows the reporters cover.
Joni and John have been putting posters up in Squirrel Hill coffee shops to get the word out about the Betty Davis event
Future promotion:

Create a flyer template for BHF events to be shared digitally (Brittany)
Location, Sponsors, Description, Date & time, Imagery, Social Media:
Abby- Twitter
380 Twitter followers
Mostly organizations and businesses
works with Jerry, rotates with him on posting, if nothing has been tweeted then she tweets something out.
GSPIA and New Leaders Council-> two networks that Abby puts info out to, roughly 150 people.
Anne Lynch posts to our Facebook. She sometimes shares this with Jerry.
YouTube -Pauline is posting the events to YouTube and Jerry is putting them on the website. Are they being shared to Facebook? (from Joni: I don’t know about Pauline doing this. She posts her videos after the event is filmed)
Jerry is reposting the videos to Facebook – Abby will reach out to Jerry

Public Relations Committee Meeting, March 9, 2019

In Attendance: Joni Rabinowitz, Chair

Dan Beeton

Brittany Sheets

Suzanne Donsky

Howard Scott

Absent: Anne Lynch, Abby Wolensky

Last year roundup of events and roles:

Did press releases for April, May, August, and Sept for higher profile events
These went out to the different local area newspapers and online publications
Dan has a press list that was used last year
Dan noted we did not get a lot of responses to these inquires
Suzanne sent event submissions for community calendars online in 2018
Has a growing list of submission places and their requirements
Plans on using this list and expanding into 2019
Are submitted either individually or in groups to multiple places depending on the publication
Looking to collect as many community calendar submission places as we can for 2019
Goal is to have events submitted 1-2 months ahead of time to publication calendars
Joni submitted events to Merton Center calendar and bi-monthly eblasts.
Joni distributed the program brochures
talk it up at every breakfast. Bring brochures to breakfast and announce what’s coming up and give them to people to distribute at events.
Buy plastic counter brochure- holders –
Take them to some stores, restaurants, historical
Give them to other members to do the same
Arrange for brochures to be at various events
2019 Events for press consideration:

Fannie Sellins event
Anniversary of the synagogue shooting
We will have competition for press coverage but will hopefully piggy back off of others and get a mention for our event efforts.
2019 Program Outreach Plan:

We want to make a conscious effort moving forward to collaborate with other community groups to co-host events for publicity when possible.
Make sure that individuals that are featured with our events are spreading the word to their lists and contacts
Goal: Form a relationship with Darrin Kelly- head of the labor council (replaced Jack Shea)
In brochure- like us on Facebook and share our events
Joni is going to reach out to contacts at the Post-Gazette about some possible reporters who might cover some of our events.
Dan is trying to write the press release for early April so we can try to generate media coverage for the 1st event. The first event is the Panel and discussion about 1919 on Thursday April 25.
Do they also work with any particular reporters that we could reach out to get coverage for our events that weekend
Dan is trying to write the process release for early April so we can try to generate media coverage for the event.
For the May Day related events, Brittany will create a quick 4-up flyer that can be handed out any marches or rallies for the cause.
Joni will talk to Jackie about the organizers of this year’s programs, to make sure we can get them to cross promote onto their lists.
Thursday May 2nd and Saturday May 4th events- reach out to Guillermo Perez and Monica Ruíz- ask if they have media connections they can advise would be interested in covering our events. Also ask them to promote within their networks. Possibly piggy back off of press from May Day events.
Thursday April 25- Joni to ask Eric Davin if he can help publicize the event
Saturday April 27 – Mrs. Shakespeare- Joni to ask Dennis Robinson to help promote in theatre comity Yvonne Hudson- can she promote with Pittsburgh Shakespeare in the parks outreach
June 8- Reach out to Mike, and Patty to push out to their lists
July 11- Smokestack lightning has their own list, Joni will talk to them to make sure they can push out info on social media about the event.
August 17th– Joni talking to Peter, asking him to push out to his lists, ask him to reach
out to the history society?
Monday August 26- Fannie Sellins event, get with Steffie to get USW support to spread the word.
Social Media

Howard’s BHF Facebook group management
He shares articles to the BHF Facebook groups (2)
Jerry and Anne are doing all other the social media postings for Facebook (official page), and twitter
For better engagement, we need to ask our group members to like and share our events, please engage more with our events to spread the word.
Double check that there is a link in the emails that go out to like and share our stuff on social
On event pages on the website- add Facebook links to events for rsvp access and sharing
We need to designate someone who can maintain the twitter account completely
It was suggested to ask Abby if she would be interested in taking this on. If she is not Brittany will take this on.
We have a hootsuite- we can utilize this for prescheduling posts.
Misc.:

We should have a banner for BHF use it at events, any marches we go to
Free of charge, open to the public- important to add into language for marketing