Challenge

On the eve of a new administration in Sacramento and at a critical time for investment and reform of California's higher education system, California Competes found themselves woefully understaffed and underresourced to effectively and strategically position themselves with key stakeholders to best capitalize on this moment. They turned to Adamec Communications for our ability to effectively communicate to policy, government, and public audiences and for our knack of translating wonky gobbletygook into actionable messaging.

Solution

Shaun Adamec worked closely with California Competes during the critical three month period leading up to and immediately following the inauguration of Governor Gaven Newsom. The goal was to produce a series of strategically positioned materials - research briefs, talking points, OpEds, and other publicly-facing materials to position California Competes as a thought partner for the new administration and prioritize its policy proposals for enaction by the new administration and legislature.

Challenge

A prominent private school reached out to Adamec Communications as it prepared to terminate its headmaster for cause. The headmaster was a beloved, long-term figure at the school, and the Board wished to save face for him and for themselves. This was news that would come as a shock to the community, and likely to the headmaster. Work needed to be swift, respectful, and discrete.

Solution

Adamec Communications worked quickly to draft scenarios. For each scenario, we developed concrete communications – letters, talking points, emails. We identified stakeholders and mapped communications planning to our crisis response protocol. We not only supported the school in finding the right language to apply to the situation, but we also worked through the best strategy given the context of the situation, the people involved, and the goals of the school.

Challenge

In 2012, Barr and the Klarman Family Foundation launched an initiative to strengthen the long-term financial health of a group of 30 arts organizations by exploring organizational and artistic risk-taking. The compelling stories that resulted could serve as fascinating exemplars for the field of arts funders, art producers, and art exhibitors about the transformational potential of artistic risk-taking, but only if those audiences heard the stories in the first place.

Solution

Adamec Communications teamed with our partners at Hairpin to produce a series of seven video profiles, sharing the journey and impact of artistic risk-taking through the eyes of the arts leaders who were funded. In addition, our team strategized the roll-out of these videos, produced promotional materials to accompany each video's separate launch, and wrote an accompanying blog post for each video in the voice of the original artist.

Challenge

Nellie Mae had a bold ambition – to move the New England region to 80% college and career readiness by 2030 – a shift that would dramatically increase the rate of change thus far. In order to inspire the kind of systemic change that would be necessary to reach that goal, they needed to pay close attention to the dominant public narrative and how public systems – like education systems – were responding to public will. How can a Foundation inspire a shift in public will and build support for dramatic change in an institution like public school?

Solution

As Director of Strategic Communications for the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, Shaun Adamec built a strategic approach to build public will. Every grant awarded, every contract granted, and every partnership executed would be charted along a continuum of building awareness, understanding, support, or demand for student-centered approaches to learning in New England. In one year, Adamec and his team designed and deployed a $10 million annual grant initiative for the Foundation that combined grassroots advocacy, public engagement support for school districts, state-based policy alliances, and strategic investments in journalism throughout the region.

Challenge

The Partnership for the Future of Learning was born out of an effort to align education-focused Foundations around a shared vision and set of values for what the future of learning should look like. In some ways, it was a response to a growing antipathy to a public system, fringe voices that sought to tear down a system available to all students. This group hoped to offer a bold, affirmative vision for public education, one that is high-quality, equitable, and accessible for all students. And they needed a way to talk about their work, why it mattered, and what made it different from the many voices in education reform today. They called on Adamec Communications and our partners at Hairpin for help.

Solution

Working with a small focus group of representative members of the Partnership, Shaun Adamec facilitated an accelerated process through a series of virtual sessions and pre-work that articulated a shared brand narrative, priority audiences and stakeholders, and a set of common counter-arguments with recommended talking points for real-time use by the Partnership members.

Challenge

Asked of a dozen people in the room, "What is the Research Collaborative and why is it important?" we heard a dozen different answers – not an uncommon phenomenon when the bulk of the work is dedicated to the programming itself and less to the task of communicating about it externally. But JFF had a big event coming up where they would reveal the findings of some ground-breaking education research. They needed some language that made sense, was easily digestible, and that all of their stakeholders could rally behind. They called on Adamec Communications and got a lot more than just some fancy words on a page.

Solution

What started with a need to develop a mobilization strategy that would bring hundreds of people from across multiple sectors to a big event that would occur in three months resulted in an accelerated strategy development process to: (1) develop a brand narrative, (2) scaffold priority audiences, and (3) build a comprehensive communications strategy for both the event and the Research Collaborative more broadly.

Challenge

Funders for Housing and Opportunity identified Public Narrative Change as a core component of their strategy as a collaborative, and needed support identifying what options were available to them, what objectives they should be measuring against, and what roles were appropriate for Foundations in the narrative space.

Solution

Over the course of ten months, Shaun Adamec worked with Funders for Housing and Opportunity to articulate their ambitions related to narrative change, translate these ambitions into an Outcome Map for strategic planning purposes, identify the dominant narrative we are seeking to change, draft the new desired narrative, and explore options for deployment as a philanthropic collaborative.

Challenge

Five years into its current philanthropic focus, the Henry P. Kendall Foundation sought guidance from its Board on where to go next. They knew that small, programmatic grants would not ultimately amount to the kind of regional movement they knew was necessary to turn the tides on the local food system. So they turned to Adamec Communications for support.

Solution

Adamec Communications asked the tough but necessary questions that guided the organization and its Board towards its current strategy. What quantitative results can we point to from the last five years? What stories can we share that illustrate those results? What pieces are missing from the game-changing improvements we seek? In the end, the Board relied on the entrepreneurial instincts the Foundation was founded on – identify the leverage points in the market and press on them until you achieve the balance you seek. The Foundation wanted to focus on large-scale food buyers and incentivize them into shifting more of their purchases to local food. Enter: Prize Philanthropy.

Challenge

Map Academy welcomed students for the first time in September 2018, and this significant benchmark came after three years of planning, advocating, organizing, and persuading. When launching any new venture, there is a lot to do. Effective, strategic communications and messaging makes all of those tasks better and more impactful. The Map Academy Founders engaged Shaun Adamec and our partners at Hairpin to synthesize their story, develop critical materials, gain community and state support, and eventually open their doors to their inaugural class.

Solution

Shaun Adamec has become a critical ally and partner to the Founders and leaders of Map Academy. First, Shaun took the many resources, notes, and drafts of Map Academy's state charter application and completed it to respond to key prompts from state authorizers. In the critical months that followed charter approval, Shaun and the designers at Hairpin developed collateral material, website design and copy, and key advice and materials to shape the origin story of the school and bring community stakeholders along the launch journey. As the Map team grew, Shaun provided critical support with fundraising strategy, including the development of a grant proposal to a new philanthropic partner. As the school's story evolves with the addition of an inaugural class, Shaun has helped to revise existing materials and create new ones to ensure the school's leadership can focus their attention where it belongs – on the students and staff of Map Academy.

Challenge

As an organization in a rapidly emerging field, NEEP has a lot of stakeholders, multiple audiences, and the potential for endless partners. NEEP needed a strategic approach to prioritizing these, to understand how best to communicate with each, and to develop a strategy that ensures the communications activities they invest in are the most high-leverage and effective.

Solution

Over a six month period, Adamec Communications worked closely with NEEP leadership, staff, and Board members to develop an Outcome Map for the organization that articulates the long-term change NEEP seeks in the world, their own contribution toward that vision, and the partner groups that will be necessary to achieving those goals. Armed with that shared understanding, NEEP was then better informed to start considering audience prioritization. We explored the audiences that are most high-leverage to make a difference, what it is NEEP wanted from these audiences, and the best ways – given natural barriers and motivations – to compel them in the desired direction. Together, we developed a new brand narrative that would serve as a lens through which all organizational messaging could be developed. Lastly, with the background of this important work, we were then equipped to develop a communications strategy, informed by a set of specific strategy and tactic recommendations from Adamec Communications.