80 Foundations Win Honors for Outstanding Communications Efforts

May 1, 2008 | Read Time: 3 minutes

At its annual conference in Washington next week, the Council on Foundations will honor winners of its annual awards for creative and strategic communications by foundations and corporate-giving organizations. The Wilmer Shields Rich Awards — named after the council’s first executive director — seek to highlight communications efforts that further an organization’s grant-making goals.

Judges, including professional photographers, writers, and Web-site designers, selected 80 foundations — out of 213 total submissions — to receive awards this year in the categories of annual or biennial reports, magazines and periodicals, public-information campaigns, special reports, and Web sites. Foundations’ projects were judged against those by grant makers with a similar level of assets.

Among the winners:

The Meyer Foundation, in Washington, received a gold award for its 2006 annual report “Lifelines,” which spotlighted the personal histories of individuals helped by five organizations that the foundation supports.
The foundation hired a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist to capture the featured individuals and organizations. Bookmarks about each group were included in the report, and each contained contact information and a request for support.

One of the charities that was featured in the report was asked by another local foundation to apply for a grant simply because of its appearance in “Lifelines,” said Amy K. Harbison, communications director at Meyer.
The Rose Community Foundation, in Denver, won a silver award for its two-year public-information campaign called Live On. The campaign said it sought to capitalize on the transfer of wealth that is occurring as the World War II generation dies, by helping 27 grantees of the foundation step up efforts to seek bequests.
The foundation created a variety of materials featuring the Live On logo and tagline, including a publication insert for the Intermountain Jewish News, a direct-mail piece sent to 32,000 Jewish households culled from the 27 grantees’ mailing lists, a Web site, and marketing materials customized to reach particular grantees’ audiences.

At least 435 donors have made bequests through this campaign, pledging more than $36-million to local Denver charities. The foundation, which spent $819,600 to produce Live On, said that the free marketing advice it provided to its grantees was a key to its success, plus information culled from interviews with potential donors before the marketing efforts were shaped.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation, in Baltimore, won a silver award for its special report “A Guide to Making and Using Videos at Making Connections Sites.” The spiral-bound report, which includes a DVD, seeks to help people who live in low-income neighborhoods tell their own stories. The guide is intended to help residents of the 22 cities in the foundation’s Making Connections program show that they are capable of participating in “transformative efforts” within their communities; one documentary produced with the help of the guide by a local public television station and Indianapolis residents won a regional Emmy in 2005.
The California Wellness Foundation, in Woodland Hills, was recognized with a silver award for its Make It in Scrubs public-information campaign, which sought to increase understanding about the number of minorities and young people who pursue health-care careers.
The foundation created a Web site, Make It in Scrubs, that features career information and interactive games. The site was viewed by 22,000 people in June, when the foundation broadcast announcements about it on medicine-themed television programs like Grey’s Anatomy. Additionally, the campaign used humorous Mad Libs-style postcards that young people could send to encourage friends whose “life resembles a (vegetable)” to “check out this Web site, because then you’ll be like a (successful person).”
The United Methodist Health Ministry Fund, in Hutchinson, Kan., started a Hallelujah Health campaign to get churches to promote behavior that leads to good health. The campaign used bold statements like “Did God really ordain only fried chicken, cheesy potatoes, and apple pie as the official church dinner?” on promotional materials to spur people to action. The national board of the United Methodist Church is now considering copying the effort nationwide, the fund says, and preliminary data suggest that the campaign increased public acceptance of churches promoting health.