The Catalogue for Philanthropy: Greater Washington
Cause Consultants, Shannon Kula and Melissa McCabe worked side by side with The Catalogue for Philanthropy: Greater Washington (CPGW) to help them achieve strategic communications objectives.
A Unique Organization
The Catalogue for Philanthropy: Great Washington is a unique organization that highlights the best nonprofit charities in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. Their initiatives have helped raise approximately $3.9 million for 280 featured charities to date. CPGW is a unique organization because it features small local charities, which on their own might never be discovered by potential donors.
Identifying the Issues
The Catalogue for Philanthropy’s communications goals were threefold:
- Increase and improve charitable giving;
- Raise public awareness, respect, and trust in giving;
- Deepen relationships between donors and charities.
In order to achieve their goals, the organization had to address various challenges.
CPGW Communication Challenges:
- Lack of awareness within the public about the organizations work
- General negative perceptions among the American public regarding whether or not charitable contributions are used effectively
- An overall decline in charitable contributions
Solutions and Successes
Shannon Kula and Melissa McCabe helped CPGW develop a plan which enabled the organization to present their messages to key audiences more effectively. The comprehensive plan included:
- Media kits
- Donor outreach plans
- Press releases
- Media Outreach
- And much much more!
As a result of the team’s hard work, CPGW received a significant amount of media coverage around the foundation and even some of its highlighted charities.
Melissa McCabe received both her undergraduate and first Master's degree from Wake Forest University. She is a communications specialist at the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), and was formerly a senior associate at the Council of Chief State School Officers. Ms. McCabe joined the Cause Group to apply her communications knowledge and skills to help nonprofits and companies accomplish their goals and hopes to use what she has learned from the MPS program to promote meaningful causes and help create social change
