Strategy and Marketing Josh Griffin, Vice President
The Lord comes alongside healthy things and allows them to grow. My teams help fertilize soil for staff so they can plant seeds of truth in the lives of kids.
From STRATEGY … To grow, we need to know where we’re headed and how we’re doing. The board retreat last summer laid the groundwork for an ongoing conversation about the mission’s long-term strategic plan. Our mission leadership is identifying key action steps, then aligning and communicating those globally. We’re also gathering information, listening to the Lord, and building consensus around not just the steps we need to take in 2020, but in the season beyond Forward. A major project, called Core Ministry Impact (CMI), is changing how we collect data (moving to frequent, mobile and real-time), how we display it and how we leverage it in decision-making. We’re moving toward our goal of having all U.S. ministries reporting weekly this school year, with an international roll-out next school year.
To MARKETING … The Marketing team is building and testing new technology and programs to enable the mission (at all levels) to communicate well to our various audiences, at scale. That way we can enable staff to share new and relevant information to support the work of growth and transformation. Here’s one great example:
We provided a “plug-and-play” set of resources to local areas for their year-end campaigns. This effort took the guesswork out of building an omni-channel campaign by providing content, platforms and schedules for emails, social, direct mail, video and web. This approach combined with strong calls to action helped the (500+) areas using the resources raise awareness and funds more easily. With the ability to track results out of YL Connect, we know these areas raised $1.2 million in total and each area over $27,000 on average (55% more than those not using the resources). What our field staff said: “It took less time and raised more money than any previous strategy.” “It made my time very effective. I did not have to take time writing emails. Instead, I could use the extra time to sit face to face with a donor.”
And, finally, YL2020! At 5,500+ guests, we had more people than ever before, but the real growth was in the intangibles — people’s love for Jesus, their faith in our vision to reach all kids, their desire to go back into the field. I’ll close with one quote from an attendee: “We saw, heard and felt Holy Spirit movement. We are family, together, one mission. We innovate and claim truth. We celebrate, we grow and we seek the Lord. For us so that we can reach more kids. SO GRATEFUL!”
Spring Board Report 2020 55
