Brand RFP Issues Strategic Community Partners

Strategic Community Partners is looking for an agency to elevate our brand, design, digital and written collateral and provide a proposal and plan.

Background:

Strategic Community Partners (SCP) is a national organization that works with mission-driven organizations rooted in education, equity and justice. We help organizations build capacity by pairing strategy with community and cultural context to drive forward powerful missions.

SCP works with organizations by advising, designing, and managing projects (or efforts) and initiatives that advance equity with and for communities.  They are passionate about and focus on capacity-building in the following areas:

● Community-grounded Research and Evaluation

● Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

● Education (Early Childhood, K-12, and Higher Education)

● Project Management and Systems Building

● Recruitment, Retention, and Overall Talent Management

● Strategic Planning

● Youth- and Community-based Initiative and Events (of all sizes)

Scope of Work:

Some areas for opportunity the hired agency can assist with are:

● We are a capacity building firm. This is a newer/not as common term, so people are not familiar with it.

We have the opportunity to clearly articulate what we are locally and nationally.

● We are frequently presented with opportunities to quickly and clearly articulate who we are and what

we do, but we need a clear pitch to do this effectively.

● We have grown over the past few years and want to move away from people referring to our Founder

and CEO, Chanel Hampton, as the company. We are a team of passionate, excellent professionals

working on super impactful efforts!

Examples of competitors:

● Frontline Solutions

● The Moriah Group

Deliverables

Through this process, we intend to keep our logo, brand colors, and primary fonts but are seeking a firm to assist with the following brand and asset refinement projects:

Brand Phase:

● Clear messaging that promotes SCP as a national brand, not just Detroit

● Refreshed brand book including but not limited to: new messaging, voice, new email templates, new social guidelines, photo and video guidelines, iconography guidelines, print guidelines, PR boilerplate, enhanced grammar guidance within brand book

● Recommendations for an updated brand suite (letterhead, pitch deck, proposal template, etc.)

● Refreshed core repeatable messaging including a clear and concise understanding of what our mission and vision is

● Insight collected from meeting with SCP team members and SCP partners to get their feedback and thoughts on the brand

Website Phase:

● Ensure the site’s overall message and content is reflective of the work we have done recently in terms of the vision, mission and internal SCP logic model

● Include case studies and testimonials from our partners and client projects

● Update overall functionality – is Squarespace the best platform to be on? Or should we move to another platform?

● Update flow and navigation of website and readability

● Is there a better way to integrate backend systems (e.g. Mailchimp)?

● Are there pages, functions or other pieces missing from the site that would be helpful in explaining our mission and work?

● How can we do a better job of quickly and easily showcasing our work through our website?

Technical things to know:

● We use Squarespace, but are open to exploring other platforms that may be better suited to our needs

● The templates should include customized content block options, including various standard styles and background colors to build and reinforce consistency through the site.

● We need the website to be easy to update for a non-coding website team

● All web design should be mobile-friendly

● We use Mailchimp for our email communications (newsletters, updates, invites, etc) and would like to effectively integrate it into our site

Selected agency should bring expertise in:

● Designing with accessibility in mind. We’re very focused on diversity, equity and inclusion.

● Developing innovative solutions. Both of these projects will be an opportunity for us to refresh our direction while meeting and surpassing modern expectations (UI trends and basics like passing Google’s Speed test and accessibility tests)

What we’ll provide you to get started:

● Existing brand book (anything aside from the logo, fonts and colors is on the table for revamp, but will give you an idea of where we are)

● Existing SCP Strategic Brand Positioning documents

● Examples of existing assets

● Existing PR boilerplate

● Photography and B-roll/video footage

About your brief:

We’d love to chat and provide any additional clarifying answers in addition to this brief. We’re looking exclusively at metro-Detroit firms with a background in diversity-first marketing. Your brief should include pricing and timing for each phase separately: brand work and website work, please also include the team members that would be working on the project and examples of previous work that may align with this project. We’re looking to make a decision within two weeks of the proposal.

Timeline:

● Accepting proposals on a rolling basis, a team member from SCP will be in touch regarding a timeline and next steps

Address:

celena.mancina@strategiccommunitypartners.org