For the second consecutive year, GN-IP staff collaborated with an all-star team from Thomson Reuters for the annual Thomson Reuters Social Impact Hackathon. This initiative offers an opportunity for Thomson Reuters employees from around the world to leverage their skills to contribute to the communities in which they live and work in pursuit of justice, truth, and transparency.
During this year’s event, executive director Sara Jones was joined by development director Deandra Bieneman and director of communications & community outreach Hayley Drozdowski-Poxleitner with the mission of creating the skeleton for a strategic communications plan for the remainder of 2022. While it was only Deandra’s and Hayley’s second official day at GN-IP, they jumped in with vigor to simultaneously build their institutional knowledge of GN-IP’s previous communications and development work while also joining with Sara to imagine new possibilities for how to amplify GN-IP’s mission and impact.
“Thomson Reuters is a longtime partner of the Great North Innocence Project. Along with contributing financially as a Partner-level donor, their willingness to contribute skill and expertise pro-bono to help us build our capacity to affect even greater change is invaluable,” said Sara. “The longitudinal impact of not only the financial investment but also contributions to our marketing, branding, and communications—in particular working with us to rebrand ourselves as we took on work beyond Minnesota—is momentous.”
During the full day, virtual collaboration session, TR marketing and communications professionals Lindsay Bomar, Lisa Schmidt, Bill Schu, and John Parkin, worked with Sara, Deandra, and Hayley to build out a comprehensive communications calendar that aligned with goals and key dates for the organization, and in particular, the annual Benefit for Innocence. The group discussed GN-IP’s current communications products, key audiences, and GN-IP’s vision for the future reach of the organization’s work and messaging. By the end of the session, the group also produced a strategic communications planning deck which Hayley and Deandra later drew upon to build out even more detailed, long-term communications and development plans.
According to Hayley, the experience was immensely useful and enjoyable. “The environment, even though we were virtual, felt collaborative, intentional, and open. From both their words and actions, it was clear that the TR folks we worked with were committed to contributing to our mission in a way that was substantive, meaningful to us, and useful in the short and long term.”
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