Written By: Hope Azzaratta-Rubyhawk
Edited By: Morgan Marks
Part IV: Communication is Everything
Did you miss Part III: “Repairing the Damage?” Read it here.
At the time of this writing, I am nearing the end of my AmeriCorps National term, and the events I have just described feel a world away. While the rural Red Lodge build site commanded much of my mental focus throughout the first half of my term, most of my time was actually spent in the home office I set up prior to starting service. In those first quiet hours, I immersed myself in learning. I studied Habitat for Humanity’s origins and world-wide mission to provide decent and affordable housing, entered volunteer hours and contact information into the appropriate software, updated the website, created electronic forms, uploaded photos and videos taken of the build team, and participated in video chats with coworkers, among other varied tasks.
It was in my initial couple weeks serving with Helena Habitat that Morgan casually dropped that we needed to work on a marketing plan for the housing program. She and I were meeting often at that time as I transitioned out of the training phase and while the course of my AmeriCorps term was still being shaped.
Previously, in my interview for the position of Family Services and Volunteer Coordinator (which was conducted in early-pandemic fashion, safely over Zoom), Jacob and Morgan had asked a thoughtful question about my interests and future career ambitions. My response was that I was interested in marketing and event coordination, and that I hoped to run my own successful blog and small business venture one day. Therefore, when presented the opportunity to work on a marketing plan for the Mutual Self-Help Housing and Homeownership program, I was intrigued and eager to dive in.
As I began the initial tasks of researching, brainstorming, and outlining the various needed aspects of the marketing strategy, I approached the process with the steely focus of someone climbing knowingly to the next level. I had done plenty of dabbling in marketing and enjoyed researching digital outreach tactics in my spare time, but I had never put together a detailed and organized plan in the way that was needed for Helena Habitat to be able to stretch out and reach more families with affordable housing services, and expand their outreach to bring new people into the work being done. Experience and skills picked up from previous jobs and personal projects, a forced sense of confidence coupled with common sense, and a proactive willingness to further educate myself as I went along gradually fit together like puzzle pieces until I found myself in the quiet of my little office one day, staring at a detailed and comprehensive series of spreadsheets which now comprised Helena Habitat’s housing program’s marketing plan. After further additions and revisions from Morgan, Robin (the Workforce Housing Coordinator with Helena Habitat’s rural partner organization, The Red Lodge Area Community Foundation), and myself, the plan was approved by Jacob. Soon, the three of us began implementing the various aspects of the marketing plan, and I allowed myself to feel a muted sense of pride. Better yet, my initial interest was steadily morphing into the discovery of a newfound talent and career passion.
I found contentment in spending my working hours creatively, writing content, designing graphics, gathering personal future homeowner stories, and brainstorming new ways to connect with the community, even during a time of Covid 19-induced social isolation. Determined to see results and come out much stronger professionally, I consumed every online communications or marketing training I could find, read relevant books in my spare time, and tore apart the internet looking for articles that would teach, grow, and inspire me. By the time I reached the middle of my ten and a half month long term, nothing had gone quite as intended – my job description had changed to meet the communications needs of the organization and Covid-19 mixed with frigid winter weather meant there were hardly any volunteers to coordinate – and my responsibilities at the build site were decreasing bit by bit as the future homeowners gained more experience and we got closer to hiring Rex as the full-time Construction Supervisor. I used this liberation from my previous duties to fully immerse myself in communications and marketing and, given my initial goal in entering AmeriCorps to pave a new career path, considered the circumstances to be personally serendipitous.
…Allow me to pause here and briefly flash back – way back – to a memory that persistently enters my mind when reflecting on the latter part of my AmeriCorps service term. When I was in sixth grade, my small charter-school class took a field trip to a science museum which hosted educational space-travel simulations for kids. I had been assigned to lead the communications team and, during the first half of the experience, it was my job to work solo from “mission control” and clearly relay important technical information to other students up on the “space shuttle” who were performing critical and time-sensitive “repairs” (never mind that during the second part of the simulation, my own experience on the imaginary space shuttle revealed that most of the mechanical parts looked suspiciously like large Legos with protruding wires). If the instructions I relayed were incorrect, confusing, or out of order, the would-be space travelers would be unaware how to resolve the problem in time and the perceived space shuttle would suffer an artificial, but rather theatrical, explosion.
Despite the intense theoretical danger, I had a blast fulfilling my role as the lead of communications. It was a joy to discover what messages needed to be delivered and how best to convey them. My normally introverted self was forced to think on my feet and speak out decisively – after all, lives were on the line (in a pretend way within a controlled fun-filled educational environment, but still…). Stepping out of my comfort zone in this way made me feel alive and proud, and sharing messages throughout mission control and up to the space shuttle offered a sense of connection to my fellow students. Best of all, I successfully saved the lives of my distant team and there was no virtual explosion that day…
If you swap the miniature would-be astronauts whose survival depended on being given step-by-step directions to perform a critical repair with working adults in need of a hand-up into affordable homeownership to better the lives of themselves and their families, you could say that my brief experience as the head of communications for mission control serves as a metaphor for the theme that wove itself into the remainder of my term. Just as mission control had announcements and instructions that were needed on the space station, Helena Habitat has information about valuable services it offers that need to reach those who can benefit, and both kinds of messages had to be delivered across a great distance (from earth to “outer space” and from the organization to people who had never engaged with the information and resources it offers, and who were then that much harder to reach due to social distancing). Responsible for stepping in the middle, serving as an intermediary, opening clear lines of communication, and broadcasting the necessary intelligence in a concise and meaningful way, was me.
Thankfully, in both cases, an instruction manual was provided. (More on that in a moment.)
In that experimental phase in the middle of my term when I found myself testing the waters of communications and marketing in a professional setting, I was humbled more than once by my own mistakes. The most painful wake-up call occurred when, on the general advice of a marketing professional whose class I had taken, I tried featuring weekly DIY tips for home repair on Facebook and Instagram and, as a further spin off on that idea, additional tips for better managing a household budget. The result was poor online engagement, loyal supporters of Helena Habitat feeling insulted at what they explained were unrealistic pieces of advice for the demographic we served, the waste of colleague’s time who I had asked to aid me in brainstorming for and reviewing these posts, and the shadowed-over feeling of being punched in the gut by shame. I felt foolish as I realized that in my enthusiasm, I had lost sight of the true mission of Helena Area Habitat for Humanity’s work as a non-profit. On the surface of the organization’s work is building and repairing houses and empowering people to sustainably afford their own homes. But at the core, it is all about the people. The people who are empowered to do great things they never believed they could and permanently improve their lives with the help of other people in the community who support them and give them the tools needed to take action. The people who give up chunks of their lives to sweat in the sun and freeze in the snow building a house for their own or another family that is not really just a house at all, but a home that is an opportunity to establish a permanent improvement in the experience of their everyday life. The people who form lifelong friendships and networks through doing this work side-by-side, thereby finding “home” in a more lasting and profound way than simply a roof over their heads. The people…this organization and this work is all about the people and the stories they create every day simply by being themselves and engaging in this effort together.
Up until that point, I had found myself heavily focused on the aspect of marketing. It was a familiar word and process, well-defined and, in my mind, a vital skill to flex for my future entrepreneurial goals. In an eager rush to apply everything I had been learning, I had become distracted from this obvious and profound point — it is all about the people. I knew this in an innate way, of course, and had been sharing personal stories on our digital platforms, but had gotten sidetracked by the misconception that I needed to come up with additional fun or educational content that would get people’s attention (hence the disastrous DIY tips). We did not need to invent anything else or add any fluff. Everything that mattered we already possessed in the personal experiences of the homeowners, volunteers, donors, board, and staff members who pour their soul into the mission of providing quality, affordable housing where there is growing lack. It was this pain of recognizing I had done a disservice to Helena Habitat’s audience that allowed me a truer understanding of the distinction between marketing and communications.
Marketing makes known an available product or service. Communications is all about storytelling and presenting the heart of an organization. I believe that marketing should always follow communications, because when it does, the offering is practical and sincere. When marketing comes as a natural result of the story being told, there is no need to push, convince, or add fluff. This is valuable wisdom for any ethical business, but for non-profits it is essential.
My head had been with marketing, but now my heart was in communications.
With this internal shift, everything began to click into place as I took a deeper approach to my work. Around the same time, as good fortune would have it, I found myself looking one-on-one at Jacob on the screen of my work laptop as he held up the aforementioned instruction manual: The Habitat for Humanity International Brand Guide. He asked if I had seen it and promised to send it to me in the mail. I was thrilled as I knew this was key information that I had been missing in my work so far.
Jamie, the ReStore manager at that time, and I had recently spoken about brand ideas, and I had realized our branding lacked definition when I repeatedly found myself shooting in the dark and spending too much time designing graphics and authoring text for social media. If I told you that I was actually excited to study the Habitat Brand Guide, that I had dug it up online in the MyHabitat portal, and read it twice before it even arrived in the mail, at which point I was positively tickled to finally read through the hard copy… Well, you might think I was the sort of nerd in middle school who got ganged up on by the other girls and maybe even shoved in a locker, but you’d be wrong. There were no lockers in my middle school!
During that same conversation, Jacob offered me the freedom to remove everything else from my plate and fully focus on the communications work that I had felt so pulled toward. In typical hard-headed fashion, as we talked, I regarded him with what I am sure came off as suspicion, but in truth I was and am extremely grateful for the recognition of my interests and talents, and the freedom and trust to apply these things with heart for the benefit of those Helena Habitat serves. From that point, I developed a communications and marketing strategic plan for the organization which I also presented to the board of directors, and our posts on social media began to look polished and instantly recognizable as being from a Habitat for Humanity affiliate. I worked with staff to create new systems and documents for tracking and organizing our communications, and I contributed to discussions about the organization’s messaging and public presentation. The personal stories of homeowners continued to be told, and the number of applications we received for the housing program soared — meaning we were reaching more people who could be offered a hand-up through our mission to build homes, communities, and hope.
Reflecting back to my answer in my interview with Morgan and Jacob to be an AmeriCorps National member, I have to chuckle at all the ways things can change simultaneously so much and so little within a year. I still enjoy marketing, but I now see it as a fraction of the grander and much more fascinating world of communications. Event coordination holds less direct interest to me as I have discovered it might be more fun getting people through the door than being on the other side, planning event logistics. I still tinker with blogging projects in my extremely limited spare time between full-time service work with Helena Habitat, being a spouse and parent, and preparing for the next steps in my professional life as my AmeriCorps term closes. Additionally, as I plan for my future employment, I have considered the possibility of stepping out on my own and working with organizations to brush up their communications as an independent contractor.
While my exact path is not clear yet, the goals I entered my service with have been obtained. I have discovered a new affinity for communications and been gifted with the expanded skills and experience to make a much-desired career transition. I have gained invaluable connections with wonderful people who put their heart forward in everything they do. And I have been able to feel, in however small a way, that the efforts I put in have left behind a positive and sustainable footprint.
If you were to ask me now, I would tell you that I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I accepted an AmeriCorps position with Helena Area Habitat for Humanity working from my little mountain hometown. There are times I lost sleep over my work and relationships with colleagues or times when I was exhausted by the challenges and living stipend I received and, frankly, times when I wanted to give up. There are also times I swelled with accomplishment, and there are times when I was struck by the kindness and determination of the future homeowners and staff members whom I worked beside. Ultimately and undoubtedly, the one who has gained the most from my near year of service is this one humble and unlikely member of AmeriCorps National. To the future homeowners who let me tell their stories, to the coworkers who laughed with me and supported me, to the mentors who opened opportunities and encouraged my growth, to the volunteers who inspired me, to the community members who warmly welcomed me… I cannot thank you enough. My AmeriCorps term may be ending, but I am forever in your service.
