When overlooking my Strategic Communications plan the first question asked was this;
What issue is most important to your organization right now?
For the Veterans Creating for Community or VCC it is an easy answer:
FUNDING: Finding funding so that all veterans in our community can come and create using art as a form of fun, healthy living and a welcome diversion to physical and mental challenges.
I believe that all programs have this issue but I also believe that advocating and making your program visible to your surrounding community and possible stakeholders is very important to finding and receiving funds in the form of grants, donations and sponsorships. The better you can convey your need and educate your stakeholders on why your program is so important to your community the better chance you have of receiving support.
Our mission is to help Veterans create a community through engaging in all artistic mediums as a way to improve health, build relationships and share in community projects.
Our vision is to improve the mental and physical health of not only the veterans in the PRRC program with the local VA, but to also include all veterans in our community who want to practice all forms of art making for health, wellness and fun.
More and more we are seeing how making art is helping veterans to overcome physical and mental challenges and sometimes it is easier for a stakeholder to witness or view visually how a program is doing than to read a brochure or letter. For this reason I have attached a power point that I used to get funding from a small grant competition last year as well as a multi media slide show that I created today. VCC New Power Point and Veterans Creating for Community Old power point.
If I were to use either of these I would expand on each of them with more stats and pictures. I enjoy using the multimedia tools for my creative outlet as it is a big switch from my usual painting and I believe, when expanded upon, stakeholders can get a better idea of how the VCC program is run.
100 Cups of Compassion 