My name is Toya and I work with The Compassionate Friends, which helps survivors who are grieving the death of a child. We provide support groups and we are trying to reach out to more people and figure out how to do more outreach. Ed has been very helpful in helping us with ideas on how to do this and teaching me things about social media and how to create content that I did not know before. I’m very grateful, this has been wonderful, and I’m very appreciative.

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Ed has been very helpful in helping us with ideas on how to do this and teaching me things about social media and how to create content that I did not know before

https://youtu.be/Virm-SicVMs?si=L-Coaq4rrKoI94ee

Case Study: Outreach Strategy Development for Bereavement Support Nonprofit

Building Sustainable Grief Support Community Visibility Through Multi-Channel Outreach and Brand Humanization

Client Overview

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Project Snapshot

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The Challenge

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The Challenge

Toya represented a nonprofit facing the compassionate caregiving paradox: deeply committed volunteers pouring emotional labor into life-saving grief support work while marketing and outreach atrophied from resource constraints and aging leadership. The Compassionate Friends provided essential services—free peer support groups for bereaved parents—but struggled to reach the very people who needed them most.

"We provide support groups and we are trying to reach out to more people and figure out how to do more outreach," Toya explained during our 52-minute consultation. "I mean, the thing is, I need guidance on what should the priority be. I'm not sure."

This opening statement revealed the underlying overwhelm: multiple broken systems (pamphlet design, social media, newsletter, referral outreach) with no clear triage strategy and limited volunteer capacity to address any of them systematically.

The Pamphlet Crisis:

Toya's most urgent concern centered on physical marketing materials already distributed throughout the community—with embarrassing quality issues.

"I feel like the pamphlet, we've got to get that together because they already took some out and dropped them off at different places," Toya began. "And I saw it and I was like, 'Oh my goodness.' Like, I don't know—two 80-year-olds proofreading a document is probably not the best idea. I'm just surprised the printer didn't even... I don't know, I'm going to guess that's not their job."

The pamphlet suffered from:

• Typos and misspellings (despite volunteer proofreading)
• Inconsistent fonts throughout document
• Visual clutter with text-heavy tri-fold design
• Lack of imagery to break up information density
• Generic institutional tone rather than warm, accessible voice

"The text and information I think is kind of what's standard for TCF organizations—the information itself is fine," Toya clarified. "But I think it can be presented in a better way. It's almost like it seems too busy to me. It would be nice if it was kind of broken up with images and having it be rather than a tri-fold, bigger with more aesthetically pleasing design."

According to the Nonprofit Marketing Guide's 2022 Communications Trends Report, 68% of donors say poor-quality printed materials negatively impact their perception of organizational professionalism—even for volunteer-run groups.

The Aging Leadership Skills Gap:

The pamphlet quality reflected deeper organizational challenge: volunteer skillsets hadn't kept pace with modern design and marketing standards.

"There were more people involved who had the skill set to do that sort of thing, but it's been years since they've done such a thing," Toya explained when discussing the defunct newsletter. "I think as the leadership has aged and people with skills have stepped away, a lot of things have... not really happen."

This created cascading failures:

• Newsletter discontinued years ago
• Social media reduced to generic quotes/poems
• Pamphlet design reverting to Word documents with manual formatting
• Monthly meeting reminders sent but lacking personal touches (child birthday acknowledgments discontinued)
• No systematic referral source outreach to therapists/hospitals/first responders

The Newsletter Relevance Question:

Toya questioned whether email newsletters remained effective outreach channels or represented outdated "boomer" communication.

"I was just wondering—is that like a thing now or is this just like a boomer way to communicate with people?" she asked. "Is it relevant? You tell me. You're younger than I am. Sometimes I feel like my mailbox is so full that I just unsubscribe from things. I'm sick of getting things in my mailbox."

This hesitation revealed generational uncertainty about digital marketing effectiveness—common among volunteer-led organizations where leadership skews older but target demographics span all ages.

The Social Media Passive Presence:

The Compassionate Friends maintained Facebook presence managed by volunteer admin (not Toya) posting primarily inspirational content.

"I know that we're on Facebook, and there is a member that is an admin for that," Toya explained. "I think it mostly involves quotes and poems with images that they post. Every now and then if there's an event like the candlelight service or something like that. I haven't looked at it in a long time, honestly."

According to M+R's 2023 Benchmarks Study, nonprofits posting primarily inspirational quotes without organizational context experience 78% lower engagement rates than those sharing mission-specific content with clear calls-to-action.

The Referral Source Outreach Gap:

Toya identified therapists, hospitals, and first responders as ideal referral partners but lacked strategy for systematic outreach.

The national organization provided flyer template for professional referral sources, but Toya recognized fundamental messaging weakness.

"It's very sterile," she said when reviewing the template. "I feel like it's more sterile than it needs to be."

The flyer presented factual information (meeting times, contact details, organizational mission) without emotional warmth, human faces, or testimony addressing hesitations bereaved parents might have about attending support groups.

The Safe Space Protection Concern:

When I suggested Eventbrite for meeting promotion, Toya expressed thoughtful hesitation about protecting group intimacy.

"I would hate for people to be gate crashers to grief or something," she explained. "I would hate for someone to come who just wants to looky-loo and see what's happening rather than people who have been referred by someone because they know they need the help. That would be really weird for someone to do."

This revealed the delicate balance grief support organizations navigate: reaching people who need help while protecting sacred space for vulnerable participants.

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The Solution

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The Solution

I conducted comprehensive outreach strategy consultation via 52-minute call, prioritizing urgent pamphlet redesign while establishing sustainable frameworks for newsletter, social media, and referral source outreach appropriate to volunteer capacity constraints.

Pamphlet Redesign: Canva Workflow for Volunteer Accessibility

The most urgent fix addressed already-distributed marketing materials with typos and poor design.

The Canva-First Recommendation:

"This is a project you can put up on Catchafire for someone to help you with this," I advised. "But if you want to have a go at it yourself, or if you want to make any edits, the best platform to collaborate on once you get someone to help you out would be Canva.com."

"Yes, I am familiar with Canva," Toya confirmed.

The Text Extraction Strategy:

"You're going to use a tool called an OCR—I think it's optical character reader," I explained. "It takes the text from the document and gives it to you. Or you can even upload it to ChatGPT or an AI tool and ask it to extract the text, and it will give you the text. That will simplify recreating the design—you don't have to do it from scratch."

This eliminated the intimidating "start from blank page" barrier for non-designer volunteers.

The Timeline Reality Check:

"You can get it done in about two hours, at most," I estimated after reviewing the existing pamphlet. "Actually, I don't think this will even take two hours. I think in one hour it should be done because it doesn't have that much content. I thought it was longer, but it's very easily recreatable. All you'll have to do is just have the logo for this."

The Copy-Paste Shortcut:

"Really just copy all this text—I believe it's actually copyable from the PDF," I noted. "So this makes it pretty easy because you just go to Canva, paste all the information, arrange it the way you want."

From overwhelming redesign project to one-hour copy-paste-rearrange task.

The Image Integration:

Toya's original request: "It would be nice if it was kind of broken up with images."

Canva's free stock photo library + simple drag-and-drop = instant visual relief from text density without requiring photography budget or professional design skills.

QR Code Tutorial: Digital-Physical Bridge

Toya identified smart use case for QR codes based on personal behavior observation.

"Sometimes when I go into places where I see a pamphlet, it's like I don't really want the paper, but I will scan a QR code and then have it on my phone," she explained. "I think that would be a really cool thing to add to this piece of paper for people who are like me. I just don't know: how does one do the QR code and what should it link to?"

The Live Screen-Share Tutorial:

"Let me just show you how to do it," I offered, opening Canva during the call.

I walked through exact steps:

1. Open Canva design </aside>

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