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There is an overwhelming amount of information out there about how to maximize the effectiveness of your email strategy.  Advocacy & Communication Solutions, LLC highlights the best of the best from CoSchedule Blog, Connectivity, and Salsa Labs.

From knowing the best days and times to send emails and how to create an engaging subject line, to increasing your open rate –it is all about raising awareness about your organization through your email with these tips!

1.     How do I get my audience to pay attention to my email?

Although the timing of your email matters, what you write in your email and how your message is delivered will help your audience notice it and take action. Consider the following tips:

• Write a catchy subject line. Your subject line should help your email get noticed so that your audience opens the email.
• State why this email matters to the audience. Relevance, not frequency, is the most influential factor in keeping contacts on your email list. If the content is relevant, your audience will appreciate the email.
• Personalize the email. When the emails address contacts individually by name, it is much more likely to get a response. If you are able to extract information about your contact’s personal preferences, send them emails that are relevant to those preferences. It could double your response rate!
• Remember to include a call to action. Include a next step or encourage a specific response, such as sending a letter to a public official, signing a petition, or reading new research to learn more.
• Use multiple channels to reach your audience and get noticed. Emails should be augmented with corresponding social media activity on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn alerting members to check their inboxes.

2.     Should everyone on my list receive all my emails? Ideally, you should segment your contact list based on audience preferences.

3.     What is the best day of the week to send email?

• Tuesday is the undisputed best day to email to your contacts.
• Thursday is also a good second day if you are sending two emails per week.
• Wednesday is an option if you are not able to finalize your content by Tuesday.

4.     What is the best time of day to send email?

• 10 a.m.-Late-morning send times are overall the most effective for getting your email noticed.
• 8 p.m.-midnight – Catch your audience as they are winding down at the end of the day.
• 2 p.m. – Your email may get noticed during a mid-afternoon break.

5.    How often should I communicate via email? As long as the content is relevant, you can send emails up to 6-10 times a month. Don’t rely on one-shot approaches, like only connecting with your audience to ask for money or to sign a pledge.  Communicate regularly and diversify your email content with your audience.   Be sure to send your updates about your organization, as well as making asks.

Advocacy and Communication Solutions, LLC provides comprehensive advocacy, strategy development, communication, and capacity building services to the non-profit, government, and foundation organizations.  To learn more about how we can help you maximize your communication efforts to meet your organization’s objectives, contact us.

Youngstown Early College (YEC), a Youngstown City School District high school on Youngstown State University’s campus that allows students to simultaneously earn a high school diploma and college credit, boasts a 100% high-school graduation rate, compared to the state’s average graduation rate of 82%. Students enrolled at YEC complete their high-school graduation requirements in two years instead of four, and spend their junior and senior years working toward a two-year associate’s degree from Youngstown State University or Eastern Gateway Community College (up to 60 college semester hours).

This year, 60% of YEC’s graduating class received an associate degree while simultaneously receiving a high-school diploma; this is a 53% increase from 2015. Currently, 56.4% of graduates go onto to receive their four-year degrees; 89% of graduates continue on with their higher education effort after their first year of college.

For the much-watched K-3 literacy measure, Youngstown City schools improved from a previous score of 47.8% to 64.2%, narrowly missing a B rating by 0.7%. All elementary schools improved at least one grade level or sustained their performance of a B or C rating. Paul C. Bunn Elementary earned an A on the K-3 literacy measure, one of only three schools to do so in the Mahoning Valley. Choffin Career & Technical Center earned an A in Technical Skill Attainment Measures.

Youngstown City Schools still has their work cut out for them but these data prove that they are well on their way to even more positive outcomes with this positive upward trajectory.

Advocacy & Communication Solutions, LLC (ACS) continues to work with Youngstown City School District and all of the districts in The Ohio 8 Coalition to advocate for collaborative solutions to improve academic performance, increase graduation rates, and close the achievement gap for urban children throughout Ohio.

Good news in the field of early childhood education. For the fourth year in a row, states’ spending on pre-k has increased, according to an April 2016 article on DistrictAdministration.com.

The article cites a report from the Education Commission of the States, which found that total state funding for preschool programs increased 12 percent over the prior year, to a total of nearly $7-billion. In the 2015-16 budget year, 32 states and the District of Columbia raised funding levels of preschool programs.

States’ support for pre-k seems to be bi-partisan as well. The report found that of the states that increased pre-k funding, 22 of the states had Republican governors and 10 had Democratic governors.

In 2015-16, five states – Idaho, Montana, New Hampshire, South Dakota and Wyoming – were the only states that did not provide state funds for pre-k, compared to 11 states just three years ago. Nine states decreased funding, and three stayed the same, according to the article.

The trends in state funding of pre-k mirrors what is happening at the federal level. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) increases funding for early childhood education through Title I, Title II and Preschool Development Grants, which will allocate $226 million to expand high-quality preschool for low-income families.

For years, Advocacy & Communication Solutions, LLC (ACS) has been immersed in the creation of early childhood learning systems in states, such as First Things First in Arizona, and in cities, such as Cleveland’s nationally recognized PRE4CLE. ACS applauds the investment in high-quality preschool expansion programs across the country, yet understands it is just one piece of the puzzle. ACS will continue to work at local, state, and federal levels to encourage a broad, cross sector, holistic strategies to helping our nation’s young children get the best start in life through comprehensive early learning systems, which address health, nutrition, parent support, social services, as well as high-quality preschool.

A new study released by First Things First (FTF) shows Arizona is making significant strides in the area of early childhood Oral Health. The most common disease faced by young children, early childhood caries (a rapid form of tooth decay), can cause lasting harm to a child’s oral and general health, as well as impact their intellectual and social development. Oral disease nationally causes kids to miss 51 million school hours per year. There are additional costs of tooth decay for families and society. Treatment of severe ECC can initially cost $6,000 to $12,000, especially if children need to be hospitalized and treated under general anesthesia. On the other hand, the cost of a preventive dental visit is less than $200.

Since fiscal year 2010, FTF has invested more than $23 million in efforts to prevent ECC and promote positive oral health practices in families and communities. This includes providing a total of 177,950 oral health screenings and 162,240 fluoride varnishes to children birth to 5 years old through fiscal year 2015.

The study shows that FTF and its early childhood system partners’ prevention efforts are paying off. Since 2003, the percentage of Arizona’s kindergarteners with untreated decay has decreased from 35% to 27%. The percentage of Arizona’s kindergarten children with a dental visit in the last year increased from 54% to 77%. In addition, the percentage of young children who had never been to a dentist was cut by more than half, dropping from 25% to 10%.

ACS has been providing support to FTF leadership on strategy planning, facilitation, communication, and capacity building since in 2009. Read more ACS’s work with FTF here.

ACS Vice President Scarlett Bouder and ACS Senior Strategist Rebecca Cohen will present at the 2016 National Smart Start Conference in Greensboro, NC, May 2-5. At the nation’s largest conference devoted to early learning systems and strategies, the ACS team will deliver three presentations.

1. Scarlett will moderate a featured session, “From Grassroots to Grasstops: Early Childhood as a Political Platform,” with a panel that includes Rhian Evans Allvin, Executive Director for NAEYC; Katie Kelly, Executive Director for PRE4CLE in Cleveland; and, Tom Lamb, Government Affairs Director, PNC Bank.
2. Scarlett will later present “Moving from Buy-In to Ownership: Systems Change Through Authentic Collaboration,” which covers lessons learned from ACS’ work across the country.
3. Rebecca will lead a workshop on effective messaging called “Be a Better Spokesperson for Infants and Toddlers.” 

If you’re at the conference, please be sure to say hello. If you have an interest in what we can offer at your next conference contact us!

Advocacy & Communication Solutions, LLC (ACS) will present to workforce development leaders at the Pennsylvania Workforce Development Association Conference on May 18, 2016. ACS Vice President Scarlett Bouder and Senior Strategist Rebecca Cohen will join Michael Lawrence, Principal of Community Workforce Advancements, LLC to help workforce professionals:

1. raise their workforce organization’s profile at both the local and state level,
2. promote their value as strategic boards, and
3. clearly articulate an agenda that includes policymakers, business, education, economic development and nonprofit stakeholders.

The workshop will include elements of the Advocacy 101 and Becoming a Great Spokesperson professional development trainings, as well as critical steps to be strategic in strategy and implementation. Participants will learn about the basics of advocacy and interact with each other to create their own messages.

With the new legislation of the Workforce Investment and Opportunity Act (WIOA), Workforce Boards have an even greater opportunity to become more strategic, acting as catalysts and coalition builders, as they build career pathways, industry sector strategies, engage new target audiences and stakeholders, and have greater impact on their community. ACS, along with workforce partners Workforce Advancements, LLC and Workforce Systems Associates offers several opportunities to help local and state workforce entities build coalitions and their own strategic leadership to play an active role in workforce and community development.

ACS President and Co-Founder Lori McClung met with foundation leaders at the 2016 Grantmakers in Health Annual Conference on Health in Philanthropy last month in San Diego, California.  Grantmakers In Health (GIH) is a nonprofit, educational organization dedicated to helping foundations and corporate giving programs improve the health of all people.

The theme of this year’s conference was Charting a New Course: Roadblocks, Breakthroughs, and Discoveries.  Sessions focused on the challenging aspects of grant implementation and management, and the critical role of communication, relationship building, and problem solving. Sessions highlighted the role that foundation trustees can take, and explored topics such as how foundation boards can prioritize long-term investments when faced with pressing short-term needs.

ACS is honored to work with philanthropic organizations both as clients and partners in implementation, such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and their Forward Promise Initiative. RWJF’S Forward Promise initiative seeks to vastly expand the potential for boys and young men of color to grow up healthy, obtain a good education, and find meaningful employment.

There’s an ongoing dialogue nationally about how school choice programs deliver better results for school students.  Three recent reports from Louisiana, Michigan, and Ohio call into question the effectiveness of K-12 voucher lotteries and charter schools.

Louisiana, for example, has the fifth-largest voucher program in the country, which began in 2008 in New Orleans and expanded to the entire state in 2012. Students from families with incomes below 250 percent of the Federal Poverty Limit are eligible for vouchers averaging $5,311 per student, as long as their public schools are low performing (about all of the state’s public schools). Researchers found that achievement scores of voucher lottery winners dropped significantly in their first year of attending private school in math, social studies and science.

The Brookings Institute, which analyzed the research, noted that “the results suggest that the participating private schools need to provide far more support for voucher students when they enter. If the voucher students continue to perform poorly, Louisiana needs to overhaul the criteria used for including schools in the voucher program—or shut down the program altogether.”

In Michigan, a report released by the nonpartisan Education Trust-Midwest, found the state’s charter school authorizers need performance-based accountability because Michigan’s charter schools’ performance remains “terribly low.” About 20 percent of Michigan charter school openings between fall 2011 and fall 2015 were by “D” and “F” authorizers. While some poor-performing schools closed recently, other failing schools continue to operate. The report found that 80 percent of Michigan charters demonstrate academic achievement below the state average in both reading and math; however, it applauded a handful of “high-achieving” charter schools at which African-American students excel at reading at or above grade level.

“Presently no one – not even Governor Rick Snyder – holds authorizers accountable for their academic performance, despite the fact that their authorized schools serve nearly 145,000 Michigan children, and charter schools take in more than $1 billion dollars of taxpayer dollars annually,” the report stated.

In Ohio, The Columbus Dispatch found that Ohio’s charter schools continue to struggle. Analyzing recent state report cards, the Dispatch said that more than 80 percent of Ohio’s charter high schools got an “F” on their ability to graduate students on time in four years; those schools enroll more than 42,000 students. No charter high schools were in the top 10 of schools graduating students on time, and only two charters were given an “A” rating. The median percentage of students graduating on time after four years at high schools in the Big 8 districts was 71.2 percent, compared with 56.3 percent at charters.

In terms of literacy improvement, about 8 percent of Ohio’s charter schools rated A or B. No charter schools in Ohio’s larger cities of Cincinnati, Canton or Youngstown were rated A or B for helping youngsters read, and all of Canton’s charter schools received F’s.

These three states are examples that are worth continued monitoring. The recent trend is that school choice programs have diverted funds away from public schools, with mixed results at best, and without the same standards and oversight that public schools face. The only way to ensure all children have the same opportunity at a high-quality education, regardless of where they live and where they choose to attend school, is to apply the same accountability standards to all schools – public charters and traditional public schools alike.

ACS has deep knowledge and expertise in this area and through its client work engages policymakers, media, and community members on the importance of accountability for all schools to help all kids succeed. Want to know more about our work in this area? Need a speaker for an upcoming conference or event? Contact us!

The new ACS case study, Raising the Bar on Behalf of Boys & Young Men of Color, spells out how a deep and customized approach to grantee technical assistance provided added value for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and five grantees in the Forward Promise initiative. The Forward Promise initiative addresses the fact that boys and young men of color are more likely to grow up in poverty, live in unsafe neighborhoods, and attend schools that lack the basic resources and supports that kids need in order to thrive.

A customized technical assistance approach is especially effective for grantees who are working to build and leverage community relationships and rally new supporters around innovative ideas.  RWJF and its grantees received added value that went well beyond traditional technical assistance. “We were able to help grantees learn as peers from one another and share ideas that could feed into each others’ plans,” says Lori McClung, President of ACS.

To learn more about how ACS’s deeply customized approach to technical assistance delivers lasting value, read the full case study.

In 2010, more than 757,000 adults worldwide took some portion of the GED test according to the GED Testing Service.  High school completion or equivalency has long been considered the marker of a student’s preparation for work or postsecondary education. Passing the GED provides youth and adults opportunities to pursue post-secondary education and work.

When Common Core Standards implemented a series of new tests to ensure students would be ready for postsecondary education in 2014, GED standards also became more rigorous, which meant that the numbers of students who passed the equivalency exam decreased.  After the GED became more difficult to pass, the passing rate for the 223,000 students who took the test that year was 62.8 percent, down from nearly 76 percent in 2013 according to US News and World Report. In response to this decline, the GED Testing Service lowered the high school equivalency exam passing score by 5 points (150 to 145) in January 2016, making thousands of students who previously scored above 145 but below 150 now eligible for a GED credential.  The company issued a recommendation that states grant retroactive passage to those who failed with the previous score of 150, but each state can make its own decision, according to Education Week.

So what score means a student is “ready” for college or work? This is murky, and, as education experts have debated, secondary education exit exams do not equate to college entrance exams, or even employer expectations. The recent changes to the GED exam mean that more students have greater opportunity to access college and job opportunities, but it does not necessarily mean they are prepared to excel.

ACS is proud to work with clients like The Ohio 8 Coalition, the City of Little Rock, and former client Towards Employment, which seeks to assist students and job searchers acquire the education and training they need to succeed in their chosen fields.