To the Dogs

In my Writing for Nonprofits class, I am no longer a student. My professor...no longer a teacher. I am a communications consultant for Harrisonburg Downtown Renaissance (HDR), and my professor is my mentor. And he's not only my mentor, but he's a mentor for the other twenty-one students in my class.

And there's your context. We are Sean McCarthy's brilliant experiment in what rhetoric and communications can add to service learning. 

Our first writing assignment in his class was to talk about a deliverable we wanted to produce for HDR in terms of the mnemonic HATCH, a concept proposed in a social media, social change book called The Dragonfly Effect. 

Anyways, according to this book, when you're focusing on raising awareness for your non-profit, or anything really, you're going to need to hatch goal that will make an impact. 

And to hatch this great idea, you need to understand your audience, you need to use short-term micro-goals to achieve long-term macro goals, and you need to identify metrics that will help evaluate your progress. You also need to create a goal that is clear and meaningful to you and your audience. 

My possible deliverable to create? A Dog Lover's Guide to Downtown. I mean, why not bring your best friend on your Sunday stroll in downtown Harrisonburg? After all, some restaurants even let you dine in with your dog as long as you're sitting outside. Vito's, though not downtown, is one of those restaurants. 

So, for example, thinking about my doggie deliverable, I, the designer, must think about the humanistic, actionable, testable, clarity, and happiness (HATCH) elements of this project. I'm still in the very early planning stages, so I decided for the purpose of this exercise my focus would be on the content of this downtown dog guide. 

Okay...

Humanistic - My audience, unfortunately, isn't dogs because dogs can't read my guide. My audience then is people that love dogs that can/are willing to bring their four-legged friend downtown.  

Actionable - I can make a list of the content that I want in my guide and break it up using appropriate headings. 

Testable - I can create a short survey about the guide's content that I can administer to the dog lovers of Harrisonburg, VA. Maybe my participants will have ideas that I didn't even think of! Hopefully, that type of thing would come out of the survey. 

Clarity - I can administer the survey to 20 people. That's a clear focus. 

Happiness??? - Dog: Person's best friend. 'Ruff said. ;)

Pretty cool homework assignment, right? I'd have to agree.