Mentoring Today

Situation
Summary background of the organization
Mentoring ToDAY began several years ago to work with juvenile offenders, to help improve their lives, as well as advocate constantly for the betterment of the District’s youth rehabilitation programs.

Obstacles
The communication challenges faced
Difficulty in recruiting new mentors for the often challenging and demanding positions of working with troubled youth was at the forefront of the organization’s challenges. Crafting messages and materials to target and retain these volunteers was an utmost priority to address this immediate need.

Solution
The steps and solution taken by the CreateAThon team
During a consulting session, a series of new communications messages were created to better target and attract new mentors. These were organized under an over-arching strategy tying participation in the mentor program with the modern-day civil rights movement. Examples of messages created include: “Mentors have the ability to affect real fundamental change,” and “The work is difficult, but the rewards are equally as great.” In addition to the messages, the draft tagline “Giving a voice and demanding justice” was created in order to help expand the understanding that the organization is dedicated to advocacy in addition to their mentoring activities.

The design team reformatted a series of legacy materials developed in-house at Mentoring ToDAY. The new materials were designed to create a consistent, bold look to better resonate with the young people that the organization serves. The design team used striking color palette of red, black, and white, balanced with friendly fonts to soften the overall look. In addition, they used photos of people who were actual participants of the program, both mentors and mentees, to personalize the materials. The group developed a brochure, poster, revised logo along with a packaged disc of common logo formats, banners for use on the web site, and an appeal piece for generating donations.

Look at a different consultation campaign from Basis