Heroes for Head Start

Organization Information:

Organization Name:
Head Start
City & State:
Billings, 
Montana
Organization Website:
http://billingsheadstart.org
Organization's Mission Statement

The purpose of Head Start programs is to increase the potential of eligible children to succeed in school by: Enhancing their overall development, Strengthening parent-child relationships & Supporting families' progress toward their goals. The long term goal for Head Start graduates is to increase their effectiveness in dealing with their responsibilities in school and life.

Submission Information

Impact Essay

In the past few years, Head Start, Inc. has been through numerous changes and as a result, our public image has been neglected. Although our community has been supportive of Head Start, it seemed as if we were no longer on the forefront of many people’s minds. In addition, we realized that we had work to do in order to better educate the public on our mission.

This fall, under new management, we determined it was time to transform our image and bring a fresh look to Head Start. We needed a new, professional image that would invite interest and encourage our community to come along side of us in our mission.

Using 2003 MS Publisher, we put together an Annual Report that shared in detail the impact that Head Start was having with the low-income preschoolers and their families in our communities. We saw this as a first step in a long process of bringing increased awareness to Head Start.

The attached 2008 Annual Report was created and mailed out to our major donors as well as larger businesses in our community. The goal was to share our mission and educate the public on how Head Start contributes to our community. The response was wonderful. One of the hospitals in our community was so impressed that they challenged their marketing team to develop something similar for their annual report. At this point, our goal is to place this report on our website so that the public has easy access to this vital information.

In order to continue this new campaign, using MS Publisher, we followed up with a shorter piece this spring called “Friends of Head Start”. With this 4 page piece we did a larger mailing and have received more positive results. Although this was again designed to increase awareness of Head Start’s mission and the highlights of our program, we were thrilled when we received some new donations. These donations actually paid for the mailing.

One of the goals of the spring “Friends of Head Start” newsletter was to invite the community to our 1st Annual Head Start Heroes Hunt. This was a family-orientated scavenger hunt geared toward bringing the community to our school & neighborhood and thus increasing awareness of our program. Three hundred people attended our event which brought in $5,000. Although these are not huge numbers, we were excited at the response on this first event and through ongoing communication, expect this event will grow each year.

In the fall, we plan to continue this new campaign with another MS Publisher “Friends of Head Start” newsletter. We have an expanded audience to include in our mailing due to the Heroes Hunt and have hopes of further increasing the number of folks who volunteer and contribute to our program, as we have seen with the campaign to date. We would also like to develop a database and move towards e-newsletters as we continue to increase awareness of Head Start.

 

MS Publisher was instrumental in helping us create a new, professional image of Head Start. Thank you for your consideration in the Microsoft Impact Story Contest. Should we be fortunate enough to receive the prize, we would use the funds to improve the technology and develop the database needed to ensure continuation of our campaign.

Thank you again.

Submission Category
Transformations to Maximize Impact
Supporting Work Files