Skyline LiteracyJackson Betz

Luke ChambersKyle Griswold

Brandon GrizzardCarolina Heisler

Marketing 385Gizem Atav

Section 24/20/2018

1. Market Analysis (1-3 pg)

Skyline Literacy is a nonprofit organization that provides a number of services to foreign and under privileged members of Harrisonburg, VA. These services include English Language Classes, Citizenship classes, GED test-prep tutoring, and Health Education classes. Skyline Literacy is a member of S.H.I.N.E., which is the “Shenandoah Initiative for Adult Literacy.” This group consists of adult literacy centers in Waynesboro, Rockbridge, Bath, Highland, and Staunton. Over this area, there are a total of 5 literacy centers, however Skyline is the only center serving the Harrisonburg area that specializes in the specific areas outlined above.

Skyline Literacy was founded in 1987 under the name “Skyline Literacy Coalition” with an original goal to serve local adult learners struggling with literacy. The organization operated under this title for just over twenty years until May 2008 when they altered their name to “Skyline Literacy”. It was also at this time in 2008 when they moved from Dayton, VA to their current, more centralized location in the heart of Downtown Harrisonburg, sharing a building with the Valley Workforce Center.

The company is very driven to provide for the members of their community. The staff and volunteers are highly dedicated to the mission of the organization which is to “provide needs-based instruction in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County in literacy, English, and citizenship, using trained volunteers.” It would be safe to say that this organization's biggest strength is its people. Being a nonprofit, Skyline Literacy relies on its people to sacrifice their time, money, and hard work to create change. Such dedication is rare to find in large corporations or even small for-profit companies. Unfortunately, being a nonprofit does have its disadvantages as well. The average age of the people utilizing their resources is 40 and the average age of the tutors are about 43. This older environment may turn away younger individuals that truly need this service. For Skyline to grow they must find ways to engage a younger audience and hire younger employees. Another problem that they face is their lack of funding. Operating as a nonprofit relies solely on donations and government grants, which are somewhat infrequent and often come in small amounts.

In terms of competition, Skyline remains one of the only organizations in the area that dedicates themselves to their particular services. The Massanutten Technical Center (MTC), also located in the Harrisonburg/Rockingham County area, offers some similar services as Skyline. The main difference between these two is that MTC is targeted more towards helping students in high school on technical training and GED preparation. MTC is also a community partner of Skyline Literacy and have a long standing and respectable professional relationship.

There are a few economic and social trends that can help benefit the Skyline brand in a positive way. Economically, donors who volunteer their money to the organization can receive tax breaks from doing so, just as it is possible to receive a tax break from donating clothes to Goodwill. While this is not an incentive to target in individuals, it could be something that the Skyline staff could reinforce when meeting with large, repeat donors. In terms of social trends, Skyline prides itself as a nonprofit and by reaching out to prospective volunteers and donors as such, it is a social commonality to feel some sort of pressure to help out. This phenomenon was discussed in Influence: Chapter One as the concept of reciprocation. If Skyline can find ways to

provide some sort of value to their prospects, the likelihood of them donating their time and money might increase.

The brand’s main users are low income members of the Harrisonburg community who may not have access to the resources that people who are more well-off receive through public education, college, etc. In addition, they also cater to foreign individuals who may not know where else to go for their particular service. According to the US Census Bureau, foreign born individuals make up 16.6% of the Harrisonburg population (United States Census Bureau, 2016). This allows Skyline to have a vast amount of users that possibly could use their service. I believe the existence of cultural differences on the use of Skyline's service is very evident but instead of being something negative, this is where Skyline holds its true value. By identifying with individuals of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, they are reinforcing Skyline’s brand image as a place of solace and opportunity to these targeted individuals. Regardless of race, religion, etc. Skyline’s service value is catered towards the betterment of these people. With this in mind, Skyline has no singular background that they exclude and provide an environment within their office that reinforces this theme that everyone is welcome and deserving of their resources.

2.  Current Marketing Strategy (1-2pg) In the marketing mix, exposure and attention are influenced by the promotion section.

This is due to the efforts of an organization to gain more market share and influence its prospective customers to purchase a product or use a service. Skyline’s exposure now is not where it could be as they are not very well known in the Harrisonburg community. This is partially due to the lack of customer touch points that they currently have in place. To increase their exposure, we are going to have to create ease of access for donors/volunteers that elicit some form of value. Physically, they are located in the same building as the Harrisonburg Workforce Center, but that is not enough to get individuals that would have a positive effect on the organization through the door. Their current marketing mix grabs attention, but only through active attempts by the consumer (going in the office/ getting information via flyers located in the store). To be continually successful, Skyline needs to be more active in engaging individuals through social media, at common places where they congregate, and creating more touch points. Currently,  the marketing mix is not very well interpreted by the consumers.

The marketing mix influences memory and learning by creating opportunities for the potential consumers to be exposed to ideas, offers, or advertisements that create a brand image. Currently, there are no real learning strategies being used by Skyline and this is something that should change so they can reinforce a strong public image of their brand.

The marketing mix is related to two types of consumption. They want donors and volunteers to choose their facility when choosing how to spend their money and time. The types of motivation that these people have can be related to McGuire’s Needs. Some people might feel that they need to help out their community in order to reach their full potential or self actualization. There are also some psychological needs that could relate to these consumers as well. Cognitively, we believe that people want to help the cause in order to help those who may not have access to the education they need. Additionally, the people who really donate and volunteer are also motivated to donate and volunteer when they hear about or even meet those

who have positively benefited from the services and education they helped to offer. People trying to find a place to donate or volunteer may be affected by approach-approach conflict. The two needs outlined earlier may help to dissolve this internal conflict and make the choice of choosing Skyline as a place to devote their time and money a bit easier.

Currently, Skyline is not using effective emotional appeals. They utilize handouts and other forms of print and radio advertising to market themselves, yet this content is more informational than emotional. Being the nonprofit organization that they are does, however, elicit some sort of empathetic response to their cause. If Skyline found ways to embrace this empathetic response and utilize it in their marketing practices, I believe that they would see an increase in the amount of responses that they receive that could ultimately be converted into donors and/or volunteers.

Skyline is attempting to create associations with large nonprofits and market themselves as such. To make this association stronger, they will need to be a bit more active in their community. This will not only help to market their brand, but also help associate themselves as a more prominent nonprofit organization. This could also aid in developing reference groups by creating a more prominent brand image so consumers group Skyline with large charities like the International Literacy Organization.

Consumer attitude toward Skyline is positive due to the public image that comes with being a nonprofit organization. By hearing the name “nonprofit” or “charity”, people automatically view the company as one of good faith. The marketing mix currently does not influence any attitudes in customers, but Skyline can easily begin to influence some attitudes by utilizing things like testimonials to elicit certain feelings from consumers that can create behavioral intentions.

For the groups and/or people that they have ongoing relationships with, they are doing a good job of enhancing and growing those relationships during the post-purchase phase of the decision making process. This is achieved through actively calling on these individuals and hosting events for them to congregate together. By doing this, they influence repeat donations so the decision has already been made.

Primary Research

3. Research Objectives

Our research objective is to find two market segments: one that includes our possible volunteers and another that encompasses our possible donors. We believe that to grow this company, Skyline must first focus on the donors and then the volunteers will follow. More specifically we will target the student population of JMU. On the volunteer side of things, we believe that Skyline is doing themselves are large disservice by not actively targeting JMU students. We also believe that JMU’s students also offer an untapped market in terms of donations despite many not having large amounts of disposable income.  JMU has hundreds of organizations that organize dozens of community events each year and it is unfortunate that Skyline currently holds no place in these events. By focusing on student engagement in our research, we believe that we can provide the most value to Skyline.

In order to help improve skyline literacy, we have a few subgoals to accomplish that will then attribute to a more effective analysis. One of these subgoals is to identify traits that may be correlated with a consumer's likelihood to donate. Another sub goal is to group these traits in order to identify the segments that skyline literacy would likely benefit the most from targeting. We will then analyze these segments and decide how skyline literacy could best adjust their marketing mix to cater more directly to what are likely a large sum of their donations and get students more excited to jump at the opportunity to donate and/or volunteer.

In our research we initially believed that people’s general attitudes about non profits would identify some universal characteristics that lead individuals to donate and would help improve Skyline Literacies awareness among college students. These questions were beneficial in the sense that they allowed us to identify certain characteristics that generally led people to donate, such as having someone close to them being affected by the issue the non-profit seeks to help or contributing to non-profits through religious institutions. Initially, we figured this to be the focus of our research. However, as the focus groups progressed, we realized that the participants were much more focused on other aspects. When we started looking at trends in customer feelings towards Skyline Literacy’s pamphlets, website, and instagram we found some simple ways to adjust stimulus factors of these advertising mediums to increase consumer’s retention of the material. These proved to be much more beneficial in identifying exactly how the material can be altered to better suit our desired target market. In summary, although the questions remained the same throughout both focus groups, it was the questions added outside of what we believed were the most important questions that proved to be the most practical in finding solutions.

4. Research Summary (1-2 pages including Objectives)Our focus groups consisted of college students, male and female, between the ages of 18-

22. We wanted to focus the discussion on people who would donate and volunteer their time rather than people who would participate in Skyline Literacy as clients. The length of our sessions lasted between 40 minutes to an hour. Unfortunately, the second focus group had to be completed in a shorter amount of time (40 minutes) because of scheduling implications of the room in which we were conducting the discussion. This length of time (40 min. - 1 hour) was chosen because it fit the majority of our participants schedules and it limited redundancy in the participant's responses. Both focus groups were held in study rooms, which we had reserved. The study rooms allowed for us to create a calm and focused atmosphere where our participants could feel confident when speaking their opinions. For the first focus group there were no offerings and we made sure to correct that wrong for the second group. Mini-muffins were brought to the second focus group and we found that the comfortability level rose faster with our second group of participants when compared to the first. Before each focus group we made sure that all of the participants understood how the focus group was going to be run, what the rules were, and that they were free to speak their opinions without being judged. By saying that, we were able to add to the atmosphere that would be most beneficial to our research. The questions that were asked throughout each session were aimed to promote critical thinking in order to get better results. Probing questions allowed us to get the groups talking and by doing so, each participant felt more comfortable and inclined to answer questions with further insight later on.

Each of the participants had a great experience and we made sure to show our gratitude at the end of each session.  

There were a number of things we learned from our focus groups. The first being that our participants were more inclined to volunteer than to donate. Their reasoning for this is because the organizations or classes that they participate in either require volunteer hours or strongly encourage them to volunteer in their community. This was beneficial to our research because it helped us understand why college students were more likely to volunteer rather than to donate. Another key insight that was discovered is that the majority of our participants were unaware of Skyline Literacy or if they were aware,they knew little about the organization. Assuming that our focus group is representative of James Madison University students, this information if beneficial in the fact that we see where the volunteers come from and now we can work on figuring out how to transition them into donors. Another thing we learned, especially from the first focus group, is that Skyline Literacy’s instagram page is too messy. Focus Group 1 was turned away from the amount of information that was given on the instagram. Their suggestion was for Skyline Literacy to post more pictures of the students working and either get rid of the information all together and save that for facebook page, or to move the information down to the caption. By doing this Skyline Literacy would be in a better position to target college students and potentially increase their donations. In summary, our focus groups helped us find out that 1) college students are more inclined to volunteer rather than to donate, 2) Skyline Literacy needs to influence those volunteers to donate, and 3) improving their social media will be beneficial to them in that they will be able to target college students and gain donors.

5. Strategic Strengths and Weaknesses (Criticism of the brand) (1-2 pages)

Based on our research we were able to find a lot of strengths and weaknesses within the brand. Through our own research and the help of our focus groups we were able to narrow these down to some of the more important factors and realize where their content might be lacking or have an excessive amount of information. Some of the brand’s strengths are that they have consistency throughout their content with color and their logo. They consistently have their trademark green color throughout all of their social media, website, and flyers. The logo is also the same throughout all of these venues of communication as well. Even though the logo and color were not well received during our focus groups, consistency in social media outlets is still important for brand awareness. While talking with the staff at Skyline about the organization, it was obvious they have close personal relationships with their donors, volunteers, and viewers. In a small town like Harrisonburg, this is very valuable. There is no doubt that the people that work there are passionate about what they do. This is not a largely funded organization like Red Cross; this is a hometown, heartfelt, organization run by people who are genuinely devoted to this cause. Unfortunately, we believe Skyline has not showcased these relationships to their full potential. One thing that is holding this organization back is its lack of expertise in creating the right type of content to cater to its audience. However, they do have a solid foundation in place which includes social media accounts, a website, flyers, and events. We believe if these were enhanced, it could improve brand awareness and increase donations. Just having an Instagram account is not good enough these days. You need one that helps you to establish thought leadership within the field of literacy education. This will make people respect your brand more and have more of a desire to volunteer and donate. They also need to make all of their content

more visually appealing and easy to understand and read. Their lack of graphic design expertise leaves for a large area for them to improve in.

The outdated logo and unattractive green color could be possibly holding back the company. The logo is really simple and antiquated. The green color doesn’t relate to what they do or look attractive. There doesn't seem to be a purpose behind the green color other than it has simply been the color for a long time. They also fail to sell their organization with their content. Specifically they do not advertise their relationships, or update their venues of communication as frequently. A lot of their content is old making it seem irrelevant. The content they have in paper form to hand out looks very simple and lacks attractive visuals. This causes a disconnect for the viewers of this content when they want to learn about an aspect of the organization but lose interest when they are presented with sub-par material. Grabbing attention and sticking out in people’s memory is important for brand awareness. They rely on personal relationships for volunteers and donors but they do not showcase these relationships to the public. There is a lot to be gained from this type of advertisement. People donate and volunteer based on emotional ties with an organization so this emotional bond is something we are missing out on creating with our constituents. They don’t have their flyers anywhere but their own building. They lack a clear and easy to understand class schedule for those that want to use this service. They need to keep in mind that their content for the users needs to be easy to read an use words at a low grade level. This will require them to modify some of their content. They also lack hard hitting facts to back the need and success of this service. Donors and volunteers want to feel that their time and money are making a difference. The lack of content communicating this value is definitely holding them back.

6. Recommendations (Save the brand!) (1-2 pages)

Since Skyline Literacy is a non-profit organization with little to no budget for marketing strategies or campaigns, we have brainstormed some inexpensive and creative ways to increase awareness and raise donations for this organization.  One suggestion that we would recommend is that Skyline Literacy change their brand’s colors. Currently, the main color that is used consistently throughout their advertising mediums which includes flyers, social media, etc. is green. Another recommendation we would make in regards to social media would be to alter the presentation of the posts that are made on Instagram in order to better capture the attention of viewers. A more drastic change we would also recommend for Skyline Literacy is to change their logo. When we asked participants in our focus groups what they thought Skyline Literacy represented just based on looking at the logo, no one could infer that Skyline had to do with helping adults improve their English literacy skills in order to pass citizenship tests or for self-sufficiency. Most said they thought the organization helped children or donated books, etc. Our group decided to create a couple sample logos that we think better embodies Skyline’s vision and purpose.

During our focus groups, we asked participants what they thought of the brand’s green color and there was an overall overwhelming negative response towards it. When we asked them what color they attributed with literacy, many of them either said they would change it to a light blue or a brighter color in general. This response affirmed our original thoughts on changing the color. We believe a light blue would be more aesthetically pleasing to the eye as well as more inviting for consumers while they browse through social media or while they look at flyers.

When we asked participants what they thought of Skyline’s instagram, they said that the posts were too wordy and because of that, they would not be drawn to read the posts. Skyline might want to consider using more images that are visually appealing and put relevant information in the captions. Since Instagram is a more visual based form of social media, I think it would be beneficial to post more attention- grabbing photos of people in the program or of volunteers, etc. For example, Skyline could pick a student and post their story on Instagram. Then they could continue to make follow up posts about this student to keep viewers engaged and emotionally involved. This might entice them to volunteer or even donate.   

When we asked participants in our focus groups what they thought Skyline Literacy represented just based on looking at the logo, no one could infer that Skyline had to do with helping adults improve their English literacy skills in order to pass citizenship tests or for self-sufficiency. Most said they thought they helped kids or donated books, etc. Our group decided to create a new sample logo that we think better embodies the Skyline’s vision and purpose.

7. Appendix 1 (Transcript of Focus Group) (FGM → Focus Group Member)

Focus Group 1

[00:38] Moderator: “What are your general feelings towards nonprofits?”  

[01:01] FGM2: “I’m going to be honest, I’m not sure.”        

[01:06] FGM4: “I used to work for a nonprofit, and it was for helping people who can’t afford a lot of medical expenses. And going through the program for 2 years I can really see the difference in people's lives.”

[01:38] FGM8: “I think they’re very beneficial. I actually did my senior project in highschool on nonprofit fraud. So there is another side to it. There are nonprofits who take advantage of people, but I would say the majority of nonprofits out there are very beneficial of the cause that they’re trying to help.”

_____________________________________________________________________________________

[13:10] Moderator: *Skyline Literacy pamphlets were passed around the group* “What do you think about these handouts?”

[15:16] FGM6: “... I like how it appeals to people who speak spanish because I saw somewhere that they do teach english. I think it’s pretty easy to read… pretty straight-forward, classic fonts it’s not like comic sans or something. I don’t mind the colors either.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

[25:26] Moderator: “Now we’re going to show you guys Skyline Literacy’s social media and try to get your reactions on that… This is their instagram page and just take a second, scroll through it, tell me what you like and what you dislike, what you think could be added or changed, and just give us as much feedback as you can.”

[27:14] FGM2: “Honestly, my take on this page is it’s a lot of words. I know someone that would use instagram would not really want to spend so much time going through all this information when you could easily get it from the website.”

[28:18] FGM3: “I feel like someone scrolling through instagram isn’t really going to take the time to read everything that they’re trying to say.”

[29:28] FGM4: “I would also post more pictures of the students doing work. You know, smiling, making it look like they’re having a good time there.”

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Focus Group 2

[05:13] Moderator: “Has anyone here volunteered with a nonprofit?”

[06:09] FGM2: “...and the other one, Skyline Literacy.”

[06:13] Moderator: “Okay, cool. What would you be doing for them when volunteering? Do you know?”

[06:34] FGM2: “... and then for Skyline Literacy, that one is to help people before they take their citizenship test.

[06:43] Moderator: “Okay, cool. And why did you decide to do this?

[06:46] FGM2: “Because my parents aren’t from this country and seeing their process of becoming citizens is interesting to me. So just hearing about Skyline Literacy from someone I met at Purcell Park and going to the orientation before they asked me if I was interested in teaching people how to read, write, umm if I was interested in 1 on 1 classes or in a whole group, or if I was interested in helping with them take their citizenship test, that interested me the most.”

_____________________________________________________________________________________

[22:40] Moderator: “For those of you who have not heard of Skyline Literacy, what does the title of the organization make you think of?”

[22:52] FGM7: “Just the title makes me think of donating books, helping kids who don’t know how to read, and helping kids in third world countries and around here.”

[23:00] FGM6: “Something kind of local, obviously Skyline, and just educational.”

_____________________________________________________________________________________

[29:39] Moderator: “I want to ask you guys about their logo... I just want you to give me your thoughts on the logo...”

[30:35] FGM3: “I agree, it’s simple. I think it accomplishes the goal when going for something like this, but maybe they could put more meaning into it. Maybe design it a little bit brighter, more attention grabbing.”

8. Appendix 2 (Outline of Focus Group)

Welcome Introduction of moderator

Topic Brand Perception of Skyline Literacy and Perception of Non Profits in general

Guidelines Part of the focus group where we make a comfortable environment for the group

and explain the rules that regulate the meetingExample:

“We will be taping this recording” “There are no right or wrong answers, only different point of views” “You don't need to agree with others” “One person speaking at a time” Rules for cell phones (no cell phone use during the meeting)

Explain that the goal of the moderator is to guide the conversation- Non Profit

- What are your general feelings towards non-profits? Beneficial or not? What are the first non profit organizations that come to your head? What about these non-profits made you think of them first? Have you ever volunteered for a non-profit organizations? If so, when and for how long did you volunteer? Where did you volunteer? Why did you volunteer? How was your experience? And how did it make you feel? If you have never volunteered, why is that? Have you ever donated to a non-profit organizations? If you have never donated, what organization was it to? Why did you donate to this organization? When choosing between two nonprofits to donate to, what factors make

you pick one over the other? When choosing between two organizations to volunteer for what factors

make you pick one over the other? Have you volunteered or donated in the area

Where why What are the non-profits that can think of that are in Harrisonburg?

Where did you hear about them? What did you hear about them? Why have you not been involved thus far?

Skyline Focused Questions o Have any of you ever heard of the nonprofit, “Skyline Literacy”?o If you have heard of them, how?o “For those who have not heard of Skyline Literacy, what does the title of the

organization make you think of?** If no one has, provide brief overview of company**

“Based on what you know, how likely would you be to volunteer for this company?”(Even if they know nothing or very little this may help give us insight into current brand awareness and perception)

o “How likely would you be to Donate to this company?”(we might even be able to have them write down a number between 1 and 10 and ask this question several times throughout the focus group)

o “Why do you feel this way?”

Hand out current informational paper handouts that Skyline Literacy is using.o Give time for them to look over some of the material

Follow up questionso What do you think about theseo “What do you like about these handouts?”o “What do you dislike?”o “Based on what you see, how likely would you be to volunteer for this company?”o “How likely would you be to Donate to this company?”o “Why do you feel this way?”o “What could skyline literacy add or subtract from these handouts that would

increase the likelihood of you volunteering or donating?” Website

Social Media o How do you think a social media presence would benefit Skyline Literacy?o What kind of social media do you think would benefit Skyline Literacy?

Events o What kind of people do you think donate their time and money to an organization

like this? o How can Skyline create events to better cater to these people? o If you had to create an event for Skyline, given what you know,  what would you

do? Follow up Questions

o “Based on what you have learned, how likely would you be to volunteer for this company?”

o “How likely would you be to Donate to this company?”o “Why do you feel this way?”

---- CONCLUSION__- Thanks for coming - we are trying to help this organization as much as possible, so thanks for your input and time9. Appendix 3 (Additional Material)

Pictured above are scans of the flyers that we passed out to our focus group so we could ask questions on their opinions of Skyline’s advertising efforts.

Pictured above is Skyline Literacy’s website, which we showed to our focus group so we could ask questions on their opinions of the websites content and layout.

Pictured above is the instagram page for Skyline Literacy, which we showed to our focus groups in order to get their opinion on Skyline’s instagram posts.

Pictured above here are two new logos that we drew up to give an idea to Skyline on what may be more appealing to students and their overall target market. One of the things that the focus group revealed was that they were dissatisfied with the green color and the logo itself.  10. References

“Home.” Skyline Literacy, www.skylineliteracy.org/.

“U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Harrisonburg City, Virginia (County); UNITED STATES.”

Census Bureau QuickFacts,

www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/harrisonburgcityvirginiacounty,US/PST045216.