THE WEST VALLEY ANIMAL

PROJECT
BUS 2200 Service-Learning Project


Submitted By

Liz Harris, Don Gonzalez, Josh Madden, Meshyalah Mcelhaney


Submitted To

Professor Melodee Lambert

5/8/2014


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Executive Summary...1

Introduction/Overview..2-3

Goals and Objectives.2
Organization and Their Needs.2
Our Needs as Business Students.2
Our Rationale3

Process, Materials & Methods..3

Results, Discussion, and Reflection...............4

Recommendations....4-6

For West Valley Animal Project.4-5
For Business 2200 Students....5
For Melodee Lambert..6

AppendixOur Documents..7-8

Bibliography....9
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report details our service-learning project to market the West Valley Animal
Projects (WVAP) annual fundraiser and to raise awareness of the West Valley Animal
Project as a nonprofit organization.

Oftentimes, small nonprofit organizations rely on volunteers to help with marketing,
creating flyers, and updating social media sites. Since most volunteers are employed,
have families or other personal obligations, they are generally only available a few hours
a week or month to volunteer. Volunteers with expertise in marketing, graphic design,
or promotions must be used to the full advantage of the organization. This is how our
group was able to contribute to the success of this years annual Spring Fling Easter Egg
Hunt for Dogs fundraiser.

For this project, we worked with the WVAP to help create flyers, distribute flyers,
market the fundraiser via Facebook, edit the WVAP website, and volunteer at the
fundraiser. These actions allowed more people to know about the fundraiserwhich
created a better turnout.

In order to ensure continued success of WVAP we recommend:

posting on Facebook weekly.
updating the website regularly.
creating an Instagram account.
marketing the nonprofit organization aggressively.

The motivation for our project was to raise awareness of the WVAP. This will help
maintain the no-kill status at the West Valley Animal Shelter and allow more animals
the chance to live long and happy lives.
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INTRODUCTION/OVERVIEW

Goals and Objectives

Our service-learning project goals were to increase awareness of the WVA Project by
marketing their annual fundraiser to increase overall attendance. By doing so, we
increased awareness of the West Valley Animal Shelters need for funds to keep the
shelter at its current no-kill status.

Organization and Their Needs

To accomplish our goals and objectives, we met with Mary, a board member of the
WVAP, to establish how our goals could align with their needs. We discussed how we
could accomplish those goals in the time allowed.

The WVAP is a very small nonprofit organization, established in 2012, that is run by
volunteer community members. Originally, we planned to create and distribute flyers
and volunteer at the fundraiser. After meeting with Mary, we realized their needs were
much greater.

The WVAP was in need of:

help editing their website.
updates and frequent posts on social media sites.
promotion ideas for their upcoming fundraiser.
ideas for future events.

It is often very difficult for small nonprofit organizations to get started and create a large
audience. With the help of our business communication skills, we were able to offer help
getting them started with, what can be, a successful nonprofit organization.

Our Needs as Business Students

As business students we need to practice and develop our skills by:

critically thinking, writing, speaking, and collaborating as a group.
creating a flyer which develops our graphic design skills.
marketing for a local nonprofit organization.
cultivating business communication skills through interviewing, listening,
speaking and writing.
developing our research skills.
broadening our horizons by enhancing our knowledge of community programs.

Our project allowed us, as a group, to practice all of these skills throughout the duration
of the project.


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Rationale

In the United States, there are between 6-8 million homeless animals that enter shelters
every year and approximately only half of them are adopted (Humane Society, 2013, 9).
Although they are euthanized for many reasons including overcrowding, disease,
aggression or injury many are put down due to lack of shelter funding. It is the goal of
WVAP to raise enough funds annually to virtually eliminate the need for the West Valley
Animal Shelters euthanization policy.

In just 18 months, the WVAP has raised enough money to reduce the kill rate from over
70% to 0% (Jepson, 2014, 9). With this information in mind, we wanted to help raise
awareness for a local organization that aids in the support of stopping the practice of
needlessly killing homeless pets in West Valley.

We decided to create and distribute flyers to raise awareness for the WVAPs annual
Spring Fling Easter Egg Hunt for Dogs to help raise funds to maintain the no-kill status
at the shelter. We updated their website to make it more user-friendly, promoted the
event on Facebook, and added pictures for visual interest to the website.

While volunteering at the event, we took a survey of those in attendance asking how they
heard about the fundraiser. This allowed us to see if what we had done had made a
difference. At the fundraiser, we took pictures, set-up and broke down the site, and
helped in any way we could.

PROCESS, MATERIALS & METHODS

As a group, we decided that most of the work would be evenly distributed and worked
on individually with revision done cooperatively in class. Liz set up meetings with the
WVAP so we could brainstorm with them on different approaches for marketing and
promoting the fundraiser.

Meshyalah, Don, and Liz all worked on creating flyers for the fundraiser, while Josh
worked on re-designing the website for maximum impact. Josh added an upcoming
fundraiser tab with a link for preregistration and updated pictures from the latest
events. We used Facebook to promote the event to our family and friends. We saw a
125% increase in page views in just the first few days.

The flyers were created using Microsoft Publisher and were sent to the Salt Lake
Community College printing services. The website was created using wix.com, which
Josh was familiar with and was able to remove unnecessary pictures and change the
fonts to increase readability. He then added more pictures and created a slideshow on
the website. These two changes improved the visual attractiveness and interest of the
WVAPs website.

After flyers were printed at printing services, we split them up among the group
members and hung the larger flyers on message boards around the Salt Lake

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Community campuses and distributed the smaller flyers to local businesses that support
local events and charities.

RESULTS, DISCUSSION, AND REFLECTION
Results
For this service learning project Liz, Meshyalah, and Don created two flyers promoting
the WVAPs Spring Fling Easter Egg Hunt for Dogs fundraiser. During the week leading
up to the event, we posted on Facebook on both our personal pages and the WVAPs
page reminding the public about the event. As a group, we volunteered at the event
helping set up and break down the site for the event. During the event we captured
images that we later uploaded to the WVAP's website and Facebook page after the event.

Discussion
Our project required each group member to use business communication, research,
graphic design, web design and marketing skills. We used skills learned throughout the
semester such as formatting, readability and how to write to determine audience and
purpose for our two flyers. These flyers were then used to promote a fundraiser for
WVAP. Communication skills are very important when needing to collaborate between
different groups with similar interests. When we focused on our communication skills
we were able to cooperate with WVAP and were very successful in promoting the
fundraiser.

Reflection

During our service-learning project we learned that it is difficult for a nonprofit
organization to market and promote fundraising events they are hosting. When
resources are limited and there is a heavy reliance on community volunteers the task of
marketing and promoting events can be daunting. However, when a social issue is this
important we must remember there is always something we can do. Nonprofits do great
work for the community and should be appreciated for all their efforts. As members of a
community we learned that volunteering with an NPO can be beneficial to both the
organization and to ourselves.


RECOMMENDATIONS

For West Valley Animal Project
Continue to promote the nonprofit by posting Facebook updates on a
regular basis. At minimum once every other week.
Create an Instagram account where dogs and cats awaiting adoption at the
shelter can be showcased which should help attract potential adopters.
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Update website every few months to create excitement for upcoming
fundraisers. This will also allow local community members to easily learn about
the WVAP and their efforts to raise money to keep a no-kill status at the West
Valley Animal Shelter.
Include statistical information on the website about the cost to house
each dog or cat weekly, the amount to spay or neuter each animal, the amount the
project has raised to date, upcoming fundraisers, how to adopt a kennel along
with the cost of adopting a kennel, and a section to publicly thank sponsors of the
project including pictures of sponsored kennel plaques.
Fundraiser recommendations include:
Halloween costume contests with an entry fee. Prizes could be as
simple as a bag of dog treats, a framed picture in the West Valley Animal
Shelter as a proud supporter of WVAP or a sponsored kennel for a month.
Dog groups. Get breeds of dogs and owners together. Sponsor a Great
Dane, German Shepard, Irish Wolfhound, or Greyhound Day and sell
treats, shirts, etc. By asking breed owners to help partnership with WVAP,
the burden of hosting these days would not rest on the shoulders of WVAP
members.
Hosting a pack at the Strut Your Mutt fundraiser and promoting it
on the website can increase awareness for WVAP.
Invite local artists that create pet friendly products, to display and sell
their work at the events. In exchange for free booth space, ask for a small
percentage of their proceeds, which can be a tax write off to the artist as a
charitable donation.
Future Easter egg hunts should be held at a park that offers an off
leash dog park area. We think this would attract more attention from dog
owners who have taken their dog out to play, but were unaware of the
fundraiser. This could increase community participation and awareness by
20-40% in the first year.
For Future Business 2200 Students
Extensive research on your proposed group. Be sure to include where they
are lacking in promotions, marketing, group awareness, information available,
etc. The more information you can provide in your proposal the better your
chances of having your project chosen.
Timeline mapping is crucial and you should allow plenty of time for research
and writing. As you dive deeper into the organization you are helping, you will
quickly uncover many holes that need filling. We expected to be making flyers,
distributing flyers, and volunteering at the Spring Fling Easter Egg Hunt for Dogs
and we quickly learned they needed help in many different areas of marketing
and community awareness (Rendon, 2014, 9). We ended up rebuilding the WVAP
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website for better readability and updating Facebook several times to promote
the fundraiser.

For Professor Melodee Lambert
Providing examples of past projects is very helpful. As students, trying to
navigate through the vast sea of potential projects makes it easy to get lost. If you
could provide examples of things already done or projects you felt could have
been excellent but were rejected, we think this would be helpful when trying to
avoid past mistakes or repeating work for organizations that have already been
helped by Business 2200 students.
Allowing creative freedom in the approach to our projects is very helpful.
There are so many different ways to approach the same topic and by allowing
students to collaborate based on group dynamics, we are often able to come to
agreement on how best to approach the problem at hand.
Being available to answer questions during class-time about
expectations and how to best handle a situation is invaluable when it comes to
our final grades.


























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APPENDIX Our Documents



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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Jepson, RoxAnnThe West Valley Animal Project

Rendon, MaryThe West Valley Animal Project

Why you should spay/neuter your pet. (2013, May 10). Humane Society. Retrieved from
http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/pet_overpopulation/facts/why_spay_ne
uter.html
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