Public Relations Guide for Rural Housing Organizations (manual

Housing Development Corporation, Hillsboro, Ore.The location of the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) is a housing developer’snightmare; although the local population and workforce are rural in nature, the organizationis located near Portland, Ore., a city known for its interest in smart growth control. As aresult, its public relations work has needed to involve a crafty strategy. Augmenting thefinancial resources of the small nonprofit organization would be an added benefit.Linda Netherton, co-executive director of HDC, decided to pool PR resources with two otherCDCs in the county. The group collaborated on an image-marketing plan. It started with agroup assessment of the work done by each of the three agencies. It was beneficial to pool thedata from the three separate agencies; the result was the stronger impact of more impressivestatistics, benefitting all three organizations.Collaboration over four months produced a common design for collective stationery andtemplates for various PR items, all sharing a common image. The focus throughout was ontelling the story common to all three organizations, of how the CDCs differed from privatedevelopers; a simple and straightforward approach was agreed upon.The result was a marketing folder, brochure, and stationery that were used for the first time ata meeting of the county housing advisory committee that made important decisions regardingHOME funds. The meeting’s outcome definitely made the project worth doing; the countychanged the way it handled HOME funds in a way that benefitted affordable housingprograms. At the end of the meeting, one decisionmaker said that because the explanations ofthe issue were so simple and straightforward, he was finally able to understand what the CDCsdid.Because of her past experience as development director for Mercy Corps International, Lindaknew the importance of PR work; she also sensed that CDCs often do not make use of PR toolseasily available at no cost.HDC used the local cable TV station heavily; it worked with other organizations in thecommunity to create an informational video on homelessness and housing. HDC staff hoped todo more with the local radio stations, including broadcasts in Spanish.HDC applied for a capacity building grant from a foundation in order to hire someone to workin resource development, a position that would include doing PR work. This person wouldwrite press releases and make sure that HDC was represented at all community meetings.More than anything else, Linda was poised to create a website for HDC; when she wasinterviewed for this guide, the organization had registered a domain name and was in touchwith a designer. Because of her previous PR work, Linda knew that funding institutions usedwebsites to research organizations they considered funding. Linda also realized the strongpotential for online donations and was eager to implement such a tool for HDC.66 Public Relations Guide