Greenham Trust: Marketing and PR to support the community

Sustainable charity funding

Greenham Trust owns the former Greenham Common Airbase and manages the 150-acre Greenham Business Park. The Trust’s principal objective is to use income from commercial property to provide charitable funding for the benefit of the local communities in West Berkshire and North Hampshire. It has supported over 1,000 local organisations, donating over £40 million in 21 years.

We’re really pleased with the results that Resonates have helped us achieve over the past couple of years. The awareness they have generated with a limited budget has been remarkable. Our resources are stretched so the ideas and support they provide us with is invaluable.

Chris Boulton CEO Greenham Trust

The brief

Greenham Trust wants to engage local charitable organisations so that they are aware of the funding available to support projects, as well as sharing community success stories to make the public aware of projects that have benefited from Greenham Trust’s funding.

Additionally, Greenham Trust wants its community events better attended. It is keen to establish its events as popular annual occasions that the community look forward to attending each year.

Reaching community touch points

Resonates planned and delivered a social and PR campaign to meet Greenham Trust’s objectives. First, we proposed new ideas and created communication plans for Greenham Trust’s Step Up 4 Good, Pitch to the Panel, 20th Anniversary and Newbury Christmas Sing-Along events, with the aim to see these events more widely attended.

We shared press releases communicating the availability of grant funding offered by the Trust, Business Park developments, its upcoming community events and the launch of its very own book: The Common Good.

Opportunities to promote Greenham Trust’s extensive involvement in the success of new community projects were identified and implemented. This included helping Greenham Trust’s relationships with local media, the community and other charitable organisations.

Social profiles were reviewed, and we addressed issues to ensure a greater discovery of both the Business Park and the Trust’s brands. We actively focussed on making sure its social audience was relevant and consisted of local organisations, charities, community projects and businesses.

We launched a #TrustGreenham campaign to encourage audiences who have benefitted from Greenham Trust’s funding to share their success stories and any updates on projects.

Finally, we applied analytics to all of Greenham Trust’s websites, including Greenham Business Park to highlight successes.

Maximising results, minimising budget

Since Greenham Trust is a not-for-profit organisation, the main challenge was maximising a minimal budget, so it was essential to focus on the activities that meet Greenham Trust’s immediate and specific needs.

We raised awareness of the Greenham Trust brand and its community events. Participation in the Step up 4 Good 10k and family fun runs has quadrupled and over 800 runners and athletes attended in 2018. Due to the event being so popular, it has sought a larger location to host the next event.

Multiple successes growing event attendance highlight how much Greenham Trust events are valued within the local community which has helped increase its exposure amongst new audiences.

Greenham Trust has seen a 41% increase in visitors to its website and an upturn in grant funding applications. By managing Greenham Trust’s social media, we have facilitated it reaching a milestone of over 1,000 followers on Facebook – an indication of how engaged the community is with the Trust.

“Our community events received the highest attendance to date in 2018. Resonates has exceeded expectations and we are pleased to be working with them again this year to deliver more local events for our community.” – Chris Boulton, CEO of Greenham Trust.