YSU President Jim Tressel was among the campaign’s spokesmen. Click the image to view his message.

The Community Foundation of the Mahoning Valley relied on the celebrity draw of prominent local philanthropists to publicize Giving Tuesday and strengthen its position as a leading advocate for philanthropy.

The foundation recently partnered with WFMJ-TV to produce and run – at no cost to the foundation –a series of 60+ public service announcements featuring Youngstown State University President Jim Tressel, the Youngstown and Warren mayors, the Beeghly family and others calling attention to Giving Tuesday.

In addition to advancing the day of giving, the seven 10-second messages put the foundation in the spotlight, as the speakers stood next to a Community Foundation logo and asked viewers to join the station and the foundation in support of Giving Tuesday.

“We didn’t ask people to give to a specific organization or cause, but we did want to promote Giving Tuesday and we did want to portray the Community Foundation as an advocate for giving,” said Shari Harrell, president of the foundation and also one of the speakers in the PSA series.

The Community Foundation leveraged its relationships with the local philanthropists to schedule the production of the spots, all at WFMJ-TV’s downtown Youngstown studio in two blocks of time during early November.

The foundation posted all seven spots on YouTube, embedded the videos on its website and shared them on Facebook, one at a time during November. The campaign also drew media coverage, including these items in the Business Journal, the WFMJ-TV Mid-Day show and the WYSU Doing Good program.

The strategy for the campaign was based partly on the premise that local TV stations have an increasingly lighter appetite for PSA proposals, said Dan Pecchia of Pecchia Communications, the public relations firm that has supported the Community Foundation since 2013.

“Both Youngstown TV stations and most across the country have their own public service programs, and they invest heavily in them,” Pecchia said. “Those programs also get priority in terms of production schedules and air time, and increasing competition from new media makes it harder for TV stations to commit additional resources to ideas from individual nonprofits as they did in years past.”

Against that backdrop, the best PSA proposals are those that “create the most potential benefit for both the station and the cause,” Pecchia said.

Here are his suggestions for those pitching PSAs:

• Generate news value. That could be achieved with high-profile people, compelling statistics or an event that would impact many.
• Lighten the station’s burden. If a nonprofit or those in its camp can deliver quality copy and graphics and assist with logistics, the station can minimize disruption.
• Aim light on time. A campaign with short messages is much easier to shoot and schedule.
• Plug the station. Media outlets don’t need general exposure, but they do want to be recognized as being good citizens, especially by those in the philanthropy communities. Be sure to acknowledge their generosity in communications to your networks.
• Plan in advance. Inventory dries up quickly, especially around the holidays when many nonprofits are pushing causes and events. Working in advance helps the station minimize disruption and allows margin for rescheduling when the inevitable something comes up.

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