The Challenge

Communications for Homeward Bound has been led on a campaign, or year-by-year, basis since the initiative’s inception. Now in our fifth year of operation, we needed a communications strategy plan to clearly and powerfully articulate the organisation’s purpose and proposition; align and further the core pillars in Homeward Bound’s strategy; unite, simplify and deepen our messaging; and bring clarity to our diverse global stakeholders about what we stand for (and, crucially, what we don’t stand for). Like many not-for-profits punching above their weight, we had a small window of time in which to complete the work, a modest budget, and a pressing need to create some communications ‘stepping stones’ to purposely guide us through the next six months.

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The Solution

Visibility Co developed a foundational strategic communications framework that beautifully ladders down from Homeward Bound’s organisational strategy, and captures our key messaging with clear calls to action. Both robustly conceptual and wonderfully practical, the framework draws together the many threads of a global, ambitious and at times amorphous initiative into three powerful ‘stances’, and then maps these areas of focus with audience, key artefacts, messaging and tactics.

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The Result

This framework has helped us to focus on what really matters – to understand what we do and don’t stand for, and what is going to best communicate our purpose and proposition. I feel like we have found our communications mojo – we now have a shared language and lens that will support us to achieve alignment around our messaging with our many internal and external stakeholders. The framework takes a lot of the guesswork and labour out of our communications – now that we understand what we are communicating about and why, it frees us up to focus on the fun stuff.