Communications Work

Context and Scenario (AI Generated Scenario for practice only, names and people are not real entities).

Organization to Defend:

StateForward, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on expanding civic participation and improving voter access across your state.

Crisis Situation:

Two days ago, a video clip went viral showing a StateForward community outreach volunteer speaking at a local high school civics event. In the clip, the volunteer appears to criticize a sitting state senator (Sen. Ramirez) over their voting record on election funding and implies that the senator's office "doesn't want young people to vote."

Sen. Ramirez (a high-profile figure up for re-election) has responded publicly, accusing StateForward of engaging in partisan voter manipulation and demanding the organization be investigated for violating its 501(c)(3) nonprofit status by making political statements. A few state media outlets have picked up the controversy, and an op-ed titled “Nonprofits Shouldn’t Be Campaign Machines” is trending.

Your team knows the speaker went off-script and broke the event protocol, but they’re a volunteer, not staff. The outreach manager didn’t catch the comment during the event.

Your Role:

You are the Director of Communications for StateForward. Your executive team has asked you to draft the initial public statement to be released within the next 12 hours.

 Constraints / Pressures (what's known):

• You are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and must avoid any appearance of partisan activity.

• The statement will be reviewed by legal and the board.

• Several legislators (on both sides of the aisle) are watching how you handle this.

• The team that runs high school outreach is demoralized and nervous.

Press Release

To our supporters,

StateForward is deeply committed to our mission of expanding voter access and strengthening civic engagement.

At a local high school event, one of our community outreach volunteers went off script from the approved remarks and has since gone viral online. Our organization has a strict policy against any personal politics involved at any public event we attend. Since the volunteer falls under our responsibility, we are taking this opportunity to expand our public speaking training for all volunteers, focusing on the foundations of non-partisan advocacy.

As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, we have strict standards we must abide by, being non-partisan is one of them. We understand that our volunteers care deeply about the issues our communities are facing, personal feelings can sweep up even the most experienced speaker in the moment.

To Senator Ramirez and your team: we understand the frustration this incident has caused, and we regret the way it misrepresented our organization’s mission and intentions. We want to reiterate that our goal is to be non-partisan and expand voting access and engagement to everybody. The incident goes against our core values and hurts our overall message.

While we are surprised by the call for investigation, we welcome any inquiry and are fully prepared to demonstrate our compliance with all legal and ethical standards, inviting the opportunity to showcase our commitment to our supporters and community.  

StateForward is committed to our core mission of expanding voter access and strengthening civic engagement and this incident will not sway us from this.

Coletyn Vega-Everdell

Reflection

I had given this scenario and what I had written, about two weeks rest before I came back to review it. 

The first thing I wanted to do was create a short statement. Knowing the limited attention spans the younger generation, and respecting the limited time most people have, creating a short statement that hits on all the points helps keep the readers engaged. 

Addressing both the supporters and the senator directly makes the audience feel as if I'm talking directly to them. Specifically with the section directed at the senator, this kind of tactic can keep viewers engaged as they may feel as if the section isn't supposed to be for them, which piques their curiosity, and for the senator, shows that we are paying attention and listening to what he's saying. I have seen this tactic firsthand when companies or the government address other entities like countries or other companies. News outlets tend to hyper analyze these specific sections as if it was directed at them. 

Another tactic I chose to employ was to take accountability for the action of the one volunteer. Even though this may have been purely the volunteer's fault, I chose to take the blame instead of throwing the volunteer under the bus. This prevents critics from "siding" with the volunteer if they were to be a PR martyr. This shows compassion and that the organization is human, something the audience can relate to. Mentioning that high-emotion topics can get professional public speakers caught up helps alleviate pressure by telling the audience that even they can experience something like this, putting them in the shoes of the volunteer. 

With both the mention of increased foundational training and welcoming any investigation shows the internal steps the organization is planning to take and helps show the audience that the organization is taking real accountability. What seems to be lacking in today's world is accountability, and audiences are literally saying that. Showing that an organization is taking accountability not only verbally, but also within its own actions, shows the audience that the organization is listening and is giving worth to their thoughts. 

Again, with the increased training, this outcome may only be a small increase in workload for the organization, but the message it's sending to the audience has a huge impact. This also prevents the PR nuclear option of outright firing the volunteer, which in some cases helps, but in this scenario, would only hurt the cause as all of the blame has already been pushed onto the organization with the senator's initial tweet. In cases where the blame is already on the organization, firing the employee/volunteer will show that the company is deflecting or passing the blame onto the specific person. 

In other cases, say a c-suite executive does something incriminating, the company firing them would be the best course of action. Showing personal accountability, as well as distancing themselves from criminal activity. In this current case with the volunteer however, firing isn't necessary as that would alienate the audience who may have the same opinion as the volunteer or show that the organization doesn't accept any level of personal opinion. On the flip side, there may be a group of people calling for the termination of the volunteer, and this decision would outrage them. If there's a big enough group that believes in this outcome, a second statement addressing these opinions would be warranted. 

My strategy to address that group calling for the volunteer's termination would take the incident that happened, and create a hypothetical, allowing easier mental visualization for the group to put themselves in the volunteer's shoes. This tends to be a hit and miss strategy, but when dealing with political issues specifically, there's never a perfect solution that appeals to both sides. Putting those critics into the shoes of the volunteer can help. If the opposite incident occurred, say the volunteer endorsed the senator, this incident would still be playing out, just with a different group of opposers. Highlighting this could appeal to those who are less extreme in views. 

Overall, my assessment of the situation pointed out the highly volatile nature of the incident, with one side of the population already against the organization. Utilizing different strategies to calm the emotionally intense audience, then reiterating the non-partisan mission of the organization can help minimalize the damage to the organization.