May 12, 2009

An anonymous donor has stepped forward to finance a full year of professional services from a national public relations team to support the DSM initiative!

The Catalyst Group is based in New York City and has an excellent reputation and track record. The team’s role will be to generate media for SPD so the DSM committee will learn through public exposure as well as our application how widespread, real, and significant SPD is.

Catalyst’s marching orders haven’t been finalized yet but under consideration are:

  • Generating national publicity about SPD for TV, radio and print media
  • Targeting a handful of high-visibility targets (Oprah, please!?)
  • Starting a “viral networking” campaign for SPD that will capitalize on social networking tools such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter
  • Coordinating with the Foundation to plan and support a national SPD awareness event later this year

Right now, we’re in the brainstorming stage, but that will be short because the time is short to raise SPD awareness before the committee makes its decisions in 2010. Whatever projects we finally concentrate on, having a media team on board is an enormous step forward. Getting the attention of national media and personalities is difficult and expensive. The Foundation could never have done this or hired someone to do it without this gift. Three cheers for Anonymous!

And if the Foundation goes forward with an awareness event/day/weekend/? YOU – the hands and feet of SPD around the world– will be the first to hear about it because we will need help from every one of you to pull this off.

So … pass the word! Tell your groups about this incredible gift at your meetings. Spread the news in emails to members. If anyone has connections to TV personalities, major media, or anybody who could make a decision that would bring exposure to SPD, send me a quick email and tell me about it. Keep your eyes peeled for any publicity in your local media and send links directly to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) so she can post them on our web site.

Meanwhile, if you opened last week’s email, watch for your SPD awareness car magnet in the mail. And if you haven’t been opening these emails, go back and open the old ones. We’ll be updating our web site effective May 1 to include the names only of those hosts who are actively hosting or serving as a community resource.

Cheering in Denver!

JoEllen

JoEllen Nikkel
Parent Coordinator