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Communication & Public Relations

Overview  |  Guides  |  Campus Examples  |  Documents to Download

In order to build and sustain effective, positive Communications and PR that supports your Bonner Program and center's work, we recommend the following practices. See Campus Examples  and  Documents to Download for some examples.

Bonner Newsletter

A regular newsletter, in online and/or print form: Many campuses produce a regular newsletter, which broadcasts work such as:

• Stories of service and community engaged scholarship
• Profiles of students (showcasing their work, learning, and ideas)
• Big service and/or engagement events (i.e., photos and stories of the campus Orientation event)
• Staff perspectives (i.e., an article by the center or Bonner Program director or by VISTAs)
• Faculty work (i.e., articles, scholarship, awards)
• Resources for faculty, students, and the campus (you can even take these directly from the Bonner Foundation's website, Weekly, or wiki, highlighting conferences, trainings, relevant articles, models, etc.)

Besides staff in the center, some campuses involve the following people in writing and doing the graphic design for such newsletters and other publications:

• Senior Interns! Yes, they can do this!
• Bonner Congress Representatives (who can even make visibility their Big Idea Project)
• Administrative Staff
• Your PR Office (some campuses have even had PR staff do workshops on Branding or other topics for Bonners, then unleashed students to play these roles)
• Full-time AmeriCorps Members and VISTA Leaders (especially if they are profiling community partners and issues)

Many program or center directors make special efforts to make sure that the following people get that newsletter every time:

• The President
• The Board of Trustees
• The VP of Academic Affairs/ Provost and academic leaders
• The VP of Student Affairs/ Dean of Students 
• The Chaplain 
• Key faculty
• Key community constituents and partners
• People who run programs like First Year Experience, Career Services, Internships, Multicultural Education, Development, Advancement, Admissions, Financial Aid, and other key collaborators on campus
• Donors or potential donors (local foundations, alumni, etc.)

Many programs even print these special for those groups, if you primarily do an online resource.

To make this easier to do, you might find the following resources helpful:

• MailChimp (offers easy to use graphical templates for email-based newsletters)
• Macintosh programs like Pages, which offers a number of great-looking and easy templates (and is free to download)
• Free website programs like Wix (one of the easiest), Weebly, and Squarespace, all of which offer incredible templates
• Free infographic and graphic design programs like Canva, Piktochart, Venngage and others
• There are a lot of great tools out there now. Check them out! 

Bonner Wiki

Since most campuses have IT offices you'll need to work through them to get your website the way that you want it to be. If resource or staffing limitations are an issue, though, we encourage you to develop a wiki (and you can even use the Bonner Foundation's platform pbworks.com to do so; about 25 campuses have!). We recommend that you make sure your website has the following to be on the cutting edge and to communicate the range of what your Bonner Program and center does:

• Descriptions of the Bonner Program (you can even cut and paste text from our website/wiki) that includes the developmental model, program goals, your admissions/selection process, application, student profiles, photos, etc. See http://www.bonner.org/student-development-model 
• Philosophy, approach, and resources for community partners. Again, this text might help: http://www.bonner.org/community-partners)
• Philosophy, approach, and resources students, including student leadership roles, programs, and your intended Student Learning Outcomes
• Resources for faculty, such as definitions and examples of community engaged scholarship, service-learning, minors and academic programs, mini-grants, readings, publication opportunities, and more. Again, this wiki has a LOT of material you can take and freely use. See Faculty Engagement - Guides and High Impact Practices - Guides.
• Links to major websites and other resources that are connected to the field and connect your center to national resources like: 
• Bonner Foundation
• Campus Compact
• Imagining America 
• American Association of State Colleges and Universities and the American Democracy Project
• Association of American Colleges and Universities  
• NERCHE/Carnegie Community Engagement Classification (great for faculty awards)
• AmeriCorps/the Corporation for National Service (if you have it) 

Creating a Social Media Brand and Communication Plan

National Bonner Fellow Matt Cummings from DePauw University has great interest and knowledge in this area. He recently provided a workshop at the 2016 IMPACT National Conference.  These slides walk through some great principles for building and sustaining a presence on Facebook, Instagram, and other forums. This is a great student leader project too!

Celebrations and Events 

One way to increase branding, marketing, and recognition for your center is through an annual (or semi-regular) celebration to highlight the incredible people, projects, and collaborations that have come out of your center. These often coincide with other large celebratory events, such as the senior capstone presentations, a community partner appreciation banquet, or a Bonner anniversary year, however, they do not have to.

Some models for what this event could look like are below:

• Student-focused celebration at the end of the year with a food truck, yard games, 150 people including invitations to the general campus community.  And then a more structured formal awards breakfast with a keynote speaker for all stakeholders (faculty, students, community partners) in the fall.
• Faculty/staff "Day of Scholarship", a graduate student "Graduate Symposium", an undergraduate "Celebration of Service and Civic Engagement Mini-Grant Showcase".  This last event has 175+ students with multi-media presentations hosted in the art gallery with food and senior administrators there.
• End of year formal banquet with 150 people (Bonners, family members, site supervisors, senior administrators with a display of capstone/signature works in the lobby and a student keynote speaker and community partner keynote speaker.
• End of year program with networking/showcasing portion that has senior capstone posters and formal awards program afterwards.  It includes faculty, students and community partners.
• Graduation week program that covers all programming through the center and invites community partners, faculty, students, and families.  Usually includes a community partner speaker (possibly the mayor) and a student speaker, has a graduation element to the event with student awards, multimedia presentations, and a reception after.
• A singular event for all programs that come out of the Center. The event would begin with something akin to a gallery walk, with multimedia displays for our service internships, break trips, VISTA program, Philanthropy Lab, Democratic Engagement, Faculty Fellows, Community Partners, and Certificate in Civic and Global Leadership. This will be an open invitation to the entire campus, all community partners, and all other students and faculty involved in our programs.  Then we will host a more formal dinner for 150 students and community partners with a speaker and awards.  

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