Encouraging more kids to join (and gain the life-long benefits of!) park and rec sports
Client
National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA)
Services
Toolkit, messaging, designed materials
“Forthright Advising was the perfect partner for this project. The team produces high quality work and is always responsive, flexible, and FUN! Truly a joy working together on this project.”
-Teresa Morrissey, NRPA senior program manager
The Brief
The Background
Research shows that when children play sports, they increase their chances to:
grow up healthy,
build confidence and lifelong skills like teamwork, and
are more likely to succeed in school and in their careers.
Yet the average child drops out of youth sports by age 11, missing out on these lifelong benefits.
The Challenge
NRPA wants to get more kids into park and recreation youth sports, with a focus on kids in underserved communities. However, NRPA doesn’t speak directly to families as part of its advocacy. The park and rec professionals who *do* reach families don’t have the time, resources or communications expertise to launch this type of campaign.
Our Solution
We created a campaign that park and recreation professionals can easily use to show families why their programs are a great choice for kids!
Here’s how we tackled it together.
We started with a research review about what matters most to parents and caregivers.
Then, we created messaging based on our research phase, along with what we heard from park and recreation professionals about their lived experiences.
Next, we thoroughly tested our messages! We:
Led 13 focus groups, including families and caregivers, park and rec pros and key funders.
Shared a survey with families and park and rec pros across the country, including rural, urban and suburban areas, across socio-economic lines and backgrounds.
Analyzed the data and created a set of key takeaways that guided the rest of our campaign.
Updated our messaging based on what we heard.
Finally, we created a full toolkit using our tested messaging, ensuring that park and recreation professionals had everything they needed to reach parents and caregivers.
As part of the toolkit, we created design materials in PowerPoint – so park and recreation professionals with no communications experience could easily update the materials.
We created resources such as designed flyers, social media graphics, postcards and more. The toolkit included everything from messaging to best practices to the materials themselves – the park and rec pros simply had to share them.
Our Results
Park and rec professionals downloaded the toolkit hundreds of times, helping spread the word about park and recreation youth sports – accomplishing our goal of building awareness, excitement and signups!
Bonus: the NRPA team invited us back to lead phase two of the project: creating a microsite and leading a storytelling process.