Why we need to give more concern to Community Relations? As a PR, especially you guys from PR/ER Department, must have known that PR needs to maintain their relations with the stakeholders. But what are stakeholders? In general, we can say that stakeholders are the one which affect and are affected by our activities. Now, let’s mention who are they? Umm, sponsor? Correct! And then? Media and government? Yes! Actually, the stakeholders an organization have is based on their focus and their size of impact. This is not going to be a PR course or Business Class of course, so let’s see it in AIESEC context. I can say that at least, an AIESEC LC has media and university as their stakeholders. When the LC grows, they may want to have sponsors and financial partners, and they become your stakeholders. Next, your LC grows larger and often hold public events, now you need government support, and they become your stakeholders too. What if I say that communities around you are also your stakeholders? You may be wondering what’s the use of engaging with communities, but let’s see it from credible sources.
Figure 1 AIESEC in PU Impact Circle on March 2019
In a business perspective, communities are the core stakeholders that will make your reputations to public. An article in Inc.com 1 define what community relations is “One defines community relations as the corporation's unforced contributions to the community. The other makes community relations a branch of public relations—a form of communications.� An article in forbes.com2 also says the importance of having community relations, especially for nonprofit organization like us. As a nonprofit organization, it is important to be engaged and relevant to the community that you are located in. By becoming an active member in the local area, not only can you increase the recognition of your organization, but you can also meet the people that make up the very community you operate in. These people are your very direct base of volunteers and donors, and your nonprofit needs to recognize them and appreciate their efforts in supporting your cause.
Figure 2 AIESEC in Bandung invites communities in Impact Circle event on 31st March 2019
But how do we implement community relations? AIESEC, in many LCs have implemented many forms of community relations and they are impressive! Some LCs invite communities to their event, some LCs make a seminar or mini workshop, the others create initiative collaborative projects and many more. But to widen your creativity, here are the nine ways of community relations for Non-Profit Organization by Forbes3 : 1 https://www.inc.com/encyclopedia/community-relations.html 2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesnonprofitcouncil/2017/10/17/nine-ways-nonprofits-can-increasecommunity-engagement/#448afdd47799 3 https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesnonprofitcouncil/2017/10/17/nine-ways-nonprofits-can-increasecommunity-engagement/#448afdd47799
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Encourage Discussion to Forge Relationships Participate in Local Events Be A Partner for Your Community Target the Leaders on The Ground Use Your Space to Inform Your Neighbors Leverage the Community for Knowledge Let Ambassadors Lead the Way Be Consistent and Get Involved Create Mutually Beneficial Opportunities
We may be familiar with some points. The first point states about discussion, we often do it with all the community gatherings we have. We also come to other UKMs or organizations’ events when we are invited. Some communities even become our partner in summer or winter project. And we create mutually beneficial opportunities when we collaborate in some events or projects. Some of the LCs already maintain good communication with the communities. One of the best ways to engage with them is sending them newest information about AIESEC and invite them to our events. Bigcontacts.com4 told the importance of maintaining good communication with communities, especially through email newsletter. Chances are that your local community will only care about your non-profit organization if it seeks to actively engage in activities and events. So why not let them know about it? Email integration allows you to send messages directly to members of the community, allowing you to highlight your participation in the next fair, local food drive, or other social events.
But have you notice the problem here? Yes, we have a lot of community relations program and strategies that even another LCs won’t acknowledge it. So, here what we need is a unified brand. That’s why since this year AIESEC Indonesia create all the community relations under the brand of Impact Circle. Either it is implemented nationally or locally, it will always use the brand Impact Circle.
4 https://www.bigcontacts.com/news/4-ways-non-profit-organizations-improve-community-outreachwith-crm-software/
Figure 3 AIESEC in UNS Impact Circle as a pre-event of Walk4SDGs
Impact Circle is a routine event to maintain engagement with communities in each city. We can make a seminar, workshop, discussion, games, master class, campaign and many more. Each LC can show their creativity with the form of Impact Circle as long as you engage communities and still pay attention to AIESEC brand. Some people will be questioning this event, isn’t it just a waste of time, isn’t it too expensive to hold, does it bring any significant impact to GV numbers? I just need to remind you, that PR activities is not Marketing activities. Know the difference, PR activities have a much long-term effects and relate mostly to brand while marketing activities show faster impact and contribute directly to sales (your EPs number). But here, let me mention the 5 main goals of Impact Circle that really beneficial for us. First, IC can be an EwA to Lead event. You can create an IC with the topic of exchange, going volunteer, global experience, and many more. But remember, don’t do direct selling. Let the topic still be general but relate to exchange things. From here, who knows that maybe the attendants want to have exchange experience, right? Second, and IC can be a pre-event of a campaign. For example, there were some LCs holding IC before Walk4DGs. This event can talk about things related to the campaign and be a platform to discuss and get them as partner of the campaign. Your LC must have IGV Projects, don’t they? An Impact Circle can talk about things related to your project. For example, you have a project about zero food waste, then create an IC and invite credible speakers and communities that concern with environment and food waste. At the end of the session you can tell them you have a project related to food waste. If they really concern to the issue, they most likely want to join the project either it is as local volunteer or even learning partner. Maybe you want to create a project but not in peak season, so you really need help from communities as project partners. IC can be a solution too. Bring the topic up, tell them why it is important, why we need to do an action to solve it. Discuss it deeper with the experts in IC. After the sessions ask them to build an initiative project with you.
There are many LCs who have implemented IC in February to April 2019, such as Unsri, UMM, UGM, UNS, PU, Unej, IPB, Bandung, etc. They create the event based on their goals I mentioned above. And so far, they have good results. We know that this implementation has just started this year, but we see good progress after all. For you guys who wants to implement IC, I can assure you that this will be beneficial for your LC. It may be not giving direct impact on your exchange number but, sure, it will give long-lasting impact on your brand, on your reputations not only to communities, but also media, public, government, and your financial partners.