Five Projects to Consider for Covid Relief Funding

Municipalities across Canada have or are in the process of allocating covid relief funding. The following communications projects are good candidates for this funding, as they are tangible, stand-alone components of an overall communications program.

1. Crisis Communicatons Plan
   When crisis hits, you’ll be behind from the outset if you don’t have key messaging prepared. This is a critical component of an organization’s overall emergency program.

2. Organizational Engagement Policy
   Has your organization articulated its position on community engagement? Do you have standards, guides, tools, and templates for staff to use as they plan and execute projects? An Engagement Policy and accompanying staff guidebook is essential to planning and conducting engagement consistently across the organization and takes the guesswork out of the process.

3. Organizational Communications Plan
   Communications are part of everything a local government does. New issues fly at you every day. A Communications Plan anchors you to longer term goals and measure performance over time.

4. Social Media Policy
   Most municipalities use social media, but many rely on older social media policies or don’t have one at all. Use this time to update your policy or put a new one in place, drawing on most recent best practices and a jurisdictional scan.

5. Social Media Guidelines
   A Social Media Policy sets high level guidance. Staff can benefit greatly from guidelines that get into the nitty-gritty of social media use. When is the best time to post on Facebook? When to use an ad campaign? What voice to use? These succinct guidelines will help your message go further!

Of course, these projects will be competing with other worthy projects from across your organization for those covid relief dollars. Remind your team that communications and engagement affect the entire organization and those dollars will go far with these five projects.