Communications Help Hub

First, book a meeting with the full Communications team (that’s Christina, Anna, Lauren, Jackie, and Sol) 4–6 weeks before you want to open the grant. We’ll bring our campaign checklist to identify deliverables, messaging, audience, and a timeline.

Next, we’ll work on getting the guidelines page ready. What we’ll need from you may vary with each grant, but generally we use “guidelines” as an umbrella term for all the following information:

• ​​​Any requests for language translations of your guidelines.
• ​​​Application samples.
• ​​​Application worksheets.
• 1–2 examples of past grant recipients including images.
• ​​​Pre-recorded workshop videos if you want them included in the guidelines. 
• ​​​The completed written guidelines for your grant. See below for instructions on how to submit these. ​​
• Full workshop information. This includes dates, times, locations, Zoom registration links, and any ASL interpretation requests.

After our kickoff meeting, we’ll send you a checklist with everything we need from you and the content deadline. This is all due to Communications, complete and finalized, 2 weeks before the grant launch date. In order to guarantee that we can post your grant on time and to make sure we can successfully manage an annual calendar of 25+ grants, this content deadline is firm. Incomplete materials or materials received less than 2 weeks before the planned launch date may not post by that date. If you think you may not be able to make your content deadline, please let us know as soon as possible and we’ll work with you to adjust the project timeline.

How to submit guidelines materials:

• ​​​Go to your current guidelines page on our website, open each drop down menu item and highlight the entire body of text. Copy and paste this into a Word document. You can also right click on the guidelines page, select Save as PDF, then convert that PDF into a Word document (open the PDF, go to the Convert tab, select Word, and click Convert). Either way is fine and will work the same for the next step.
• IMPORTANT: once your guidelines are in a Word doc, turn on Track Changes before you start making edits. You’ll find Track Changes in the Review tab. This will track all the edits you make so we know what changes to make for you when we go to update the guidelines page on the site. If you don’t do this, we have to either rebuild the page or scan word by word for changes. If we receive a guidelines page with changes NOT tracked, we will send it back to you to redo with Track Changes on. This may delay your launch date. Please let know if you need any help with this.
• ​​​Once all your guidelines materials are ready, go to the appropriate Teams channel (this is most likely COMMS – [Your Department], but is Comms – Interdepartmental Grants for any program managed by program managers from multiple departments). Upload the materials to Files and create a post letting us know they’re ready. You can tag @Comms All in the post to alert the entire Communications team at once!

We’ll send the updated guidelines to you within 1 week of receiving your materials. You’ll then have time to review the page and send any final edits back to us—please do not begin reviewing or sending edits before we let you know the guidelines are ready for you. Edits should be submitted via a comment on your original Teams post. They can be listed out in a comment or in another Word doc with Track Changes on; either is fine, but they do need to come in one single batch.

After edits are done, you’ll need to approve the guidelines page and let us know when your application is ready. We’ll then add a live Apply button to the guidelines—the grant is open!

Book a meeting 4–6 weeks before you want to open the call. We’ll bring our campaign checklist to identify deliverables, messaging strategy, audience, and a timeline. What we’ll need from you will vary with each call, but after this meeting we’ll generally ask for the following:

• Final text for your call in a Word document 1 week* before launch.
• An image to use in promotions.
• Your application finalized and live on Soapbox.

We’ll send a draft of the call to you within 3–4 days of receiving the final text. After edits are done, you’ll need to approve the guidelines page and let us know when your application is ready. We’ll then add a live Apply button to the guidelines—the call is open!

*In order to guarantee that we can post your call on time, this content deadline is firm. Text received less than a week before the planned launch date may not post by that date. If this happens, we’ll work with you to adjust the project timeline.

For best support of new initiatives, book a meeting at least 3 months ahead of time. Please share as much as possible about your project scope, intended audience, and what support you would like to see from the Communications team. If you do not have a clear idea of what support you need, we’ll lead a brainstorming session and follow up with a campaign proposal and project timeline.

Our baseline promotions for 4Culture events includes the following:

• Facebook event with a $50 targeted boost, linked to Eventbrite if RSVPs are required.
• 1 post on our Instagram main feed, and weekly Stories posts; weekly posts on Twitter.
• Inclusion in all enewsletters going out before the event and a targeted email invite.
• Image on the 4culture.org homepage.

If together we determine that this will meet your needs for the event, all content—text description and a high quality image—is required one month* ahead of time.

If the event requires a broader scope of promotions—advertising, print materials, press, etc.—please book a meeting with Communications at least 3 months in advance of the event. We’ll lead a strategy session, and bring our communications checklist to identify deliverables, messaging, audience, and a timeline.

*In order to sufficiently promote events, this content deadline is firm. We cannot guarantee promotion of your event if we receive incomplete content or if you send it less than a month ahead of the event. If this happens, we’ll work with you to adjust the project timeline.

Book a meeting to discuss the page—if it has a deadline, please book at least 3 months in advance. If not, please meet with us as early as possible. We’ll send you a series of basic questions about your page idea; please answer them ahead of time and bring that to the meeting. We’ll them discuss the project as a team and create a proposal within 2–3 weeks.

The main goals of our website are to make our resources as accessible as possible and to empower visitors to use them. All new web projects will be evaluated according to this framework, and in terms of our team resources. Creating new web pages can be a lengthy process—it usually requires stakeholder input, user testing, and extensive content development. Get Communications involved as soon as you can!

In 2019, we transitioned from having an in-house designer to working with a contract, part-time designer. To start a design project, contact Christina as early as possible—she will work with you and our contract designer to define a project scope and timeline.