Building a movement to end suspensions and expulsions in North Carolina early care settings

Client

North Carolina Coalition for Inclusion, Not Expulsions

Services

Research, messaging, microsite, development

The Brief

The Background

On average, North Carolina preschools kick young kids out of the classroom twice as much as the rest of the country. Suspending or expelling young children leads to consequences that can last a lifetime – from more suspensions to higher dropout and incarceration rates.

And, when kids don’t have access to child care, it can force parents to miss work or even leave their jobs.

That’s why we helped convene and worked alongside the North Carolina Coalition for Inclusion, Not Expulsions. The Coalition is working to end unfair suspension and expulsions in North Carolina early care settings.

The Challenge

The Coalition needed sharp, compelling messaging to clearly talk about who they are, why this issue matters and how they’ll solve it. They also needed a digital home to share these messages and their resources with key audiences who could help make change happen.

Our Solution

Here’s how we set the coalition up for success:

Strategy. First, we narrowed in on specific goals and audiences for the Coalition’s messaging – making sure we had a clear sense of who we needed to reach and what we wanted them to know, feel and do.

Research. Then, we dug into the data – exploring the issue of preschool suspensions and what our audiences most needed to hear.
Messaging. We used our research findings to develop data-backed messaging that speaks to what their audiences value. We tested the messaging, too!
Branding. We created a brand book for the Coalition, including a meaningful logo, and a full look & feel, complete with a color palette, fonts and imagery recommendations.

Once we completed the research, messaging and branding, it was time to develop our microsite – a user-friendly digital hub the Coalition could use to effectively share their messaging. We:

Worked with the Coalition to define our goals for the site and narrow in on a specific call to action.
Developed a site structure that makes it easy for our target audiences to find the information they need.
Built out all of the web content using the messaging we developed. This ensured that every word we included was backed by data.
Collaborated closely with our web partner to design an engaging, mobile friendly, search engine optimized site that brought the brand to life.