Public Relations Final Assignment

Agincourt Community Services Association

Communications Plan
By: Hadiyah Sabree
Professor: Anne Marie
Due: Thursday, November 27, 2014

Situation Analysis
Agincourt Community Services Association (ACSA) has multiple services for children,
families, youth, seniors, newcomers, parents and the homeless. According to the City of Toronto
Ward Profiles (2011), the top 10 ethnic groups in Agincourt are; Chinese, East Indian, Canadian,
Sri Lankan, Filipino, English, Tamil, Scottish, Jamaican and Italian. The residents from North
Scarborough are open to use any of the services made specifically to serve their diverse group.
ACSA is funded by the government, faith communities, foundations, and other multiple donors.
According to ACSA, more than 60 funders allow us to help 71,000 members of the community.
ACSA started out in the 1970s. They built on one of the Catholic churches that were
already helping those in need. Eight other local churches joined ACSA and the Catholic Church
to build this organization. For about 40 years, this organization opened programs, including the
food bank, to help the diverse residents and now Toronto. According to ACSA, in 2013, we
helped out and assisted around 9,000 adults and 6,500 children in the Agincourt food bank.
Our food bank is located in the Dorset Park Community Hub. To assist the homeless and
clients with housing issues we have programs such as: meals, showers, locker services, housing
follow-ups and voice mail programs. Clients are able to call in or drop by and book appointments
where their income, family, and more of their relevant information are discussed. Although
programs are tailored to that area, anyone is welcome.

Prior to planning the communication strategy, research was conducted to help form an effective
plan.
o In order to obtain good results for a campaign, a diverse, multi-cultural that is suited to
the intentions of the campaign must be targeted
o By 2025, neighborhoods in Toronto will have lower incomes than usual that will account
for 60% in certain areas (ACSA, 2013).
o Out of four million Canadians with no access to healthy foods, only one million of them
are willing to be assisted by food banks (Timmins Press, 2014).
o 17.2% of individual residents in Agincourt earns lower than $5,000 (ACSA, 2013).
o Within 20 years, three-quarters of Agincourt will consist of newcomers and their children
that will have difficulty in entering the economic mainstream (ACSA, 2013).
During February, the amounts of donations that come in are typically less than what we
get during the Christmas season. This month is one of the more valuable months for us because
we store our donations for the even slower days to come in the year. We used this information to
formulate a communications strategy that will help this time of year. Since February is associated
with St. Valentines Day; this will tie in with the communications strategy.

Goals
Our primary goal is to increase the usual number of donations during February for the
slower months throughout the year and get an effective amount of food. Our secondary goal is to
raise awareness of the ACSA organization.

Objectives

Our measurable objectives, based on the goals are as followed:

o Increase the usual number of donations for our food bank, in February, by 20%.
o Increase awareness of ACSA food bank outside of Agincourt, Scarborough and in the
Peel Region by 30%.
o Involve at least five Peel District schools from Scarborough.

Strategy
Agincourt Community Services Association needs to raise the amount of donations from
its normal post-holiday standards and tackle the objectives through an effective communications
plan utilizing direct e-mail, elementary schools, posters, informational brochures and web
communications.

Tactics
All tactics will be distributed and released during the first two weeks of the launch date, with an
exception of the direct mail. Posters and brochures will be printed for free by our sponsor, the
Agincourt District Library.
School Dance
Peel District School Board elementary and middle schools in Scarborough and the Peel
Region, which consists of Brampton, Toronto, Mississauga and Caledon, are to hold dances that
will accept non-perishable food items as a requirement to enter the dance. Useful items can be

dry pasta in all packages, rice, peanut butter, canned meat, fish, and fruit/vegetables, pasta sauce,
sample size hygiene products and new towels. The dances will be held during the last week of
February.
Posters
Posters will be used to promote donations for the February food drive. In the schools, the
posters will relate to their Valentine dance and/or to St. Valentines Day. For example, one theme
for a set of posters can be love. A phrase used can be, love others, love yourself, with an image
of the fortunate giving to the unfortunate. Other than schools the posters can be posted in
religious buildings, community centers and bus terminals.
Brochures
The brochures will be filled with facts about the ACSA food bank on poverty, hunger,
low incomes, benefits of donating and where donations are used. The brochures will be
distributed throughout February in the participating schools, so the children can bring it home to
their families. The brochures will also be distributed around the Peel Region in libraries,
community centers, religious buildings and other public areas, such as bus terminals.
Website/Social media
For our campaign, we can create a landing page. This page will have a brief description
of ACSA food banks story and what we are about. The website will also have information on the
campaign and why this time period is vital for most food banks. There will be a section
informing viewers about where to drop off donations or have an option of donating funds online,
as well as, a link to our main webpage. The main website will briefly go over everything on the
landing page with extra information including, facts on poverty in the Peel Region, the average

number of people that goes, at least, a day without food and the gap between those who are
suffering within our society and those who are not. It will explain reasons on the root of the
problems, educating on how it can be tackled. A website link will be displayed on all brochures
and posters.
Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter can be used as a tactic to inform the
public about the February food drive. This tactic can be effective because certain audiences can
be narrowed down and targeted. For example, one of our targets are children; Social media is
where they spend a lot of their time. We could also have a link in our tweets and posts that
directs them to our landing page. This process can take place as soon as the communications plan
is initiated.
Direct e-mail
There will be e-mails sent out to the intended lists, which can also be printed out into
letters for certain audiences; for example, seniors. They will be sent to the list a week before the
campaign. These messages will state the date of the February food banks drive, a brief
description of our organization and the objectives of the campaign. The e-mails will be sent out
directly to the faculty of the schools; the schools will send it to all the parents/guardians of the
children. The emails will also be sent to employees of ACSA food bank, as well as, other food
banks that are in contact with ACSA.

Audiences
Our targeted audiences primarily will be the elementary Peel District School Board
schools in the Peel Region and schools in Scarborough, which consists of the faculty, students
and parents. A couple of the schools can be: Agincourt Collegiate Institute, David Lewis Public
School (Gr JK - 8), Kennedy Public School (Gr JK - 8) and Silver Springs Public School (Gr JK
8). The faculty will be one target to educate the students. The students, at this age, will be more
likely to want to join school activities, therefore, want to donate. The residents on the outskirts of
North Scarborough and the Peel Region will also be targeted. This audience will consist of the
youth, adults, and seniors.
Considerations
o Teenagers and young adults are constantly interacting with technology.
o Seniors are more used to and depend more on traditional media.
According to the City of Toronto (2011)
o 15.4% of the age group 75 years and over are the primary household maintainers in
Agincourt.
o There are an average of 3.15 people per household in Agincourt.
o 5.7% of the population in Agincourt are 10 to 14 year olds.

According to Region of Peel

o There is a population of more than 1.2 million people in the peel region.

o Peels median age is 36.9 years.

According to Second Harvest:
o

51% of food is wasted in a home in Canada.

The younger audiences that are most likely to need assistance with providing food for

themselves are under the age of 18 of nearly 40%.

Key Messages
Overall messages that are considered priority to be received by our targeted audience:
o

To educate the public, if not already, about the number of families that are in poverty and
needs assistance from food banks, as well as, the number of families and individuals that
uses food banks as a regular resource in a year.

To motivate children of the schools to get involved with the community and encourage
them to donate and help thousands.

To inform them of how small donations can make a big impact.

Evaluation
ACSA will launch this campaign in the last week of January. With the support of all
stakeholders, all the objectives can be met. To evaluate and measure our success at the end of the
campaign, we will have to compare the results to our objectives and evaluate what we did and
what should have been don. This information will help us become more successful for the years
to come.

Objective No.1
Increase the usual number of donations to our food bank, in February, by 20%
Plan:
From the school dances, we will need to keep track of how many donations every kid
gives. The numbers will be calculated by the end of the campaign, giving us a measure. A count
of all the emails sent to the parents and a count of every child that donated can be tallied and
compared to give us results of who the direct mail affected.
For the website, we will need to have a count of all visits during the exact time period of
the campaign and check the amount by the end. There can also be a count of all traffic that made
donations to ACSA directly from the website.

Objective No.2
Increase awareness of ACSA food bank outside of Agincourt, Scarborough and into the Peel
Region by 40%.
Plan:
We will need to keep track of the number of brochures and posters given out and posted.
Since the posters and brochures will have our website on it, we could also compare the number
of posters and brochures given with the number of people who visited the website during this
time.
Another way to evaluate can be to survey the faculties of the participating schools, the
students and parents and the employees and volunteers of the ACSA food bank; this will include

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everyone who will be e-mailed for the campaign. The survey will be brief and will ask about the
participants general knowledge of poverty and food banks, if they were in contact with any of
the sources relating back to ACSA, if the sources were helpful and if the sources affected them in
any way. They will be asked if most of their knowledge has come from our sources or from
somewhere else.
Objective No. 3
Involve at least five schools from Scarborough
Plan:
At the end of the campaign, we will be able to have a count of the number of schools
involved by taking down the schools that were directly e-mailed. The number of Scarborough
schools that participated and the initial objective will be compared to see if the desired results are
achieved.