Are you wearing too many hats?

We hear time and time again that the staff at environmental organizations wear dozens of hats and face seemingly never-ending to-do lists under limited capacity. From staffing and budgeting limitations to the urgency of achieving missions, we know that environmental organizations are under increasing pressure to do more with less. Plus, it can be difficult to focus on communications when you are also working on programming and development.

We get it. The communication demands alone of managing outreach, social media channels, websites, graphic design, engagement tools, conferences, stakeholder engagement sessions, and more can be overwhelming on top of other mission critical work.

If you have limited bandwidth to tackle all of these important functions within your own staff, know you are not alone and read on! Green Fin Studio can complement your existing capacity by working as an extension of your team.

Here is one case study on how we support communications needs. We have had the pleasure of working with the Chesapeake Research Consortium (CRC) for many years. With a staff of six, CRC supports interdisciplinary science across seven of the largest and most well-respected research institutions around the Chesapeake Bay and a host of workshops and committees. They work to fully enable member institutions and the broader, regional scientific community to contribute more effectively toward better understanding and management of Chesapeake Bay and its watershed.

Quarterly e-newsletter

We launched a new e-newsletter series for CRC because they are an effective way to share news & updates and increase engagement levels. E-newsletters provide a longer form of communication so you can use the extra space to provide more detail and creativity than social media allows. Social media provides nice broadcast channels but emailed newsletters crush social media in terms of readership.

The CRC newsletters are written for a scientific audience as they are meant to share information among institutions. We interview scientists and managers to include updates from all seven member research institutions, identify opportunities for students and collaborators, and feature stories on collaborative research involving multiple universities. The resulting content is also used on their website and social media accounts. Subscribe to the newsletter for yourself.

Website and social media

We helped develop and maintain CRC’s website. One recent addition is the Chesapeake Bay Expertise Database (CBED), a database of Bay scientists organized by research interests. The database connects scientists with one another through shared or complementary expertise. The website also hosts publications from Bay scientists, internships, and research updates from around the watershed. We keep CRC stakeholders up to date through their Facebook and Twitter pages as well.

Professional Conference

Last June, we helped organize the Chesapeake Community Research and Modeling Symposium (ChesRMS18), a research conference that was attended by over 200 Bay scientists. This was the first year that the conference expanded from modelers only to include other researchers, including ecologists, chemists, economists and managers. As CRC’s mission is to foster research collaborations across disciplines and institutions, the conference provided the perfect venue to start these dialogues. Our team at Green Fin Studio managed all of the logistics, including securing the venue, planning and coordinating sessions, speakers, advertising, photography, and more.

CRC’s staff is still as busy as ever but our support helps them focus on their day-to-day priorities. If you’re juggling way too many hats and working with a tiny capacity, don’t hesitate to reach out.