Recruitment

As a social sector professional his entire career, Shaun Adamec understands what kind of professional fits best in a mission-driven organization. He will work with your staff, leadership, and Board of Directors to design the best recruitment, screening, and acquisition process to compliment your team and achieve your goals.

Shaun Adamec has served as a Communications Director, Press Secretary, Media Relations liaison, community outreach coordinator, Program Officer, grantmaker, and manager in the social sector over the last 25 years. He knows what it takes to do these jobs because he has done these jobs. From external communications to development and fundraising to executive leadership, Adamec Communications is your one-stop-shop for talent recruitment in the nonprofit sector. We can design a job description, maximize advertising ROI, screen candidates, develop performance tasks for finalists, and negotiate offers. We have designed a process that attracts, recruits, and matches top talent in the labor market with mission-driven, social-sector organizations. Our Rolodex is over-flowing with high quality candidates for your organization’s leadership positions. Let us run that search for you and professionalize your organization’s branding, messaging, fundraising, and more.

Recruitment Work

• A national trade association lost their long-time Communications Director to retirement. Adamec Communications designed the process to attract a field of talented candidates who could recover the institutional knowledge that was lost and lead the organization in a direction of progress and purpose.
• An internationally-recognized nonprofit organization wanted to elevate the status of their communications lead. With over 350 applications, we landed a top-tier candidate and convinced them to take the helm of this organization’s external marketing strategy at a $25,000 pay cut.
• A statewide organization in the mental health space needed someone to lead their public relations and fundraising communications efforts while mindful of the sensitivities of the mission’s subject matter. We did just that. After a four-month recruitment process, we found the right person to fit their budget, culture, and expectations.

We start with your brand identity. Who do you want to be in the world? How do you want people to think about you and your mission? What is your character? What are your beliefs and values? What is your tone, image, and purpose? All of these answers contribute to a consistent, dynamic voice for your organization that not only defines how the world perceives your brand, but how the public thinks about your cause as well.

Brand Voice Work

• A national education coalition asked Adamec Communications to develop messaging to help the many voices at their table sound as if they were singing from the same song sheet.

• A regional foundation working on climate issues asked Adamec Communications to help communicate their strategy shift in ways that excited stakeholders, not worried them.

• A national service organization asked Adamec Communications to help align their hundreds of employees around  common language to articulate their value proposition.

• A new school in Massachusetts asked Adamec Communications to develop their brand narrative so their marketing materials were consistent and accurately reflected the tone they wanted to project for their school.

Services

Audience Segmentation:  To accurately reflect your brand in words, you must know who you are talking to. We will help prioritize strategic audiences and speak to them in ways that bring them closer to your desired action for them.

Brand Narrative:  Using our custom approach to narrative development, we will build the story of your brand that can be used by all of your messengers to ensure consistency in voice, tone, and mission, and adapted to fit audiences and contexts.

Creative Assets:  We can develop the assets that will make you shine. From new websites to professional videos, brochures to info kits, and executive speechwriting to logo and tagline, Adamec Communications and our network of partners can deliver what you need.

Message Platform: Think differently about how you communicate your cause. Using the latest in behavioral and cultural research, we will develop new messaging for your stakeholders to not only speak consistently about the brand, but also speak strategically about your cause.

Let’s be honest, it’s a crowded field in the social impact space. Organizations and advocates compete, in many cases, for the same dollars, the same attention, and the same limited corners of the public consciousness. By understanding the field as well as you do, we can develop a strategy to rise above the noise and begin to look and talk differently about your brand and your mission. Through strategies rooted in thought leadership, strategic communications, and cultural and behavioral science, Adamec Communications can help you and your stakeholders with a fresh perspective on what is and what could be.

Positioning Work

• A regional trade organization asked Adamec Communications to help them develop a fresh perspective on energy use so they sounded a little less like the rest of the field.
• A national technical assistance provider asked Adamec Communications to help them develop a unique platform in a new space they were looking to enter without getting lost in the crowd.
• A national education organization asked Adamec Communications to help develop an alliance of allies that could push a shared agenda without causing initiative-fatigue.
  

Services

Field Analysis: We can look across other organizations in your space to see how they are talking about your issue or what they are doing to bring attention to their cause.

Research Integration: There is innovative research that can help us shape issues in ways that will move people in the right direction, and too few organizations know about it or know what to do with it. Shaun Adamec is an expert on this research and can help you apply it to your messaging and strategies to stand apart from the rest of the field.

Brand Strategy:  Adamec Communications can help you rethink the way you present yourself, from the look and feel of your materials to the words used to describe your work. We have the knowledge and experience for the refresh you desire.

Issue Framing: We can train you and your stakeholders on how to talk about your issue and what themes to avoid to help draw attention, resources, and support for your organization and cause.

A successful strategy starts with articulating the large scale change you envision and working backwards from there. Adamec Communications works closely with your team to ensure that every dollar, every second, and every ounce of energy you invest in communications has purpose and can be connected back to your mission and vision. Strategies are customized to fit your organization’s size, capacity, and strengths. We will sequence implementation so not to overwhelm and we will offer unique insights based on the experience we bring having worked across the social impact space.

Planning Work

• A community foundation asked Adamec Communications to assess its need for internal communications staff, develop a job description and core competencies, and eliminate the one-off, feel-good tactics that were wasting valuable time and money.
• A regional trade organization asked Adamec Communications to help them develop a communications strategy to align with their new strategic plan.
• A technical assistance provider asked Adamec Communications to work with their clients who were strategizing ways to reform their local school system. We helped them develop the community engagement plan to ensure residents felt ownership and did not resist the change.

Services

Identity Map:  Vision, Mission, Partners, Outcome Challenges, Progress Markers, Strategies, Tactics. Each of these must be aligned with the others or your communications strategy is little more than a collection of misaligned activities.

Communications Audit:  We will take a look at your current communications strategies and tactics with fresh perspective, ensure everything you invest time and energy into can map appropriately back to your larger vision and mission, and work closely with your team to make sure you are capitalizing on the latest tools and techniques to maximize efficiency.

Communications Strategy:  We have helped clients develop communications strategies to launch new initiatives, align staff and stakeholders around common messaging, transform an organization’s executive into a thought leader, shift the public narrative on a given issue, and gather stories from the field to share through various channels.

A start-to-finish communications strategy can be overwhelming. It can also be redundant of a process your team has already gone through. You may just need a refresher, or a jump-start that could launch a process not yet mapped out. Whether you are looking for a knowledge-sharing, skill-building training for your team, or a dynamic workshop for your conference, Shaun Adamec designs and delivers some of the most memorable and actionable presentations in the field.

Training Work

• A regional trade organization asked Adamec Communications to design a half-day workshop for their senior leadership team that offered a fresh perspective on the organization’s challenges and vulnerabilities, leading to the launch of a strategy process later.
• A public relations member organization asked Shaun Adamec to present a workshop at its international conference on effective strategies to win the battle for hearts and minds in the social impact sector.
• A coalition of national foundations asked Adamec Communications to design a day-long training on public narrative to help shape their vision for investment.

Services

Communications workshops:  If you are not sure how you want to proceed, but know you need to think about communications differently, this may be a nice place to start. Bring your team together for some learning, sharing, and probing tough questions about your messaging and brand.

Framing workshops: Using the latest in cultural and behavioral research, we will develop training for your stakeholders on what framing is and how to apply it to your issue area, to help shape the way the public thinks and talks about your cause.

Crisis workshops:  If you know you need a plan but don’t know where to start, this is it. This workshop will help you identify your vulnerabilities, measure your strengths and weaknesses, and plan for the worst-case scenarios.

Spokesperson and media training: Whether in front of the camera or behind a podium, we can make you shine. Shaun Adamec brings years of experience as a press secretary and executive communications director to your team to build on your strengths and hide your weaknesses.

Shaun Adamec understands the ins and outs of the field of philanthropy. Having served as a Director and Program Officer at a foundation, and served as consultant to dozens of others, Adamec brings a perspective that acknowledges the unique position foundations are in and can call them out when they get in their own way. There are things uniquely suited for philanthropy when it comes to communications and there are things philanthropy should not be the face of. Adamec Communications helps philanthropic organizations of all sizes position themselves, shape their field, shift the narrative, and build awareness and understanding of their issue by using their strongest and most unique asset – grant strategy.

Grant Strategy Work

• A coalition of housing funders asked Adamec Communications to help determine the path forward to invest in strategic ways that would shift the public narrative around their issue.

• A regional education foundation asked Adamec Communications to build an investment portfolio that looked different from anything they had done before, gaining them attention for innovating while bringing new grantees into the fold.
• A national foundation asked Adamec Communications to partner with eight of its grantees to help integrate communications research it funded into their organizational messaging and strategy.
• A regional foundation asked Adamec Communications to create a strategy that would generate buzz around their issue. We turned to Prize Philanthropy and created a five-year, six-million-dollar incentive program that invited bold, innovative ideas to change the landscape.

Services

Public Narrative

Foundations recognize the role public narrative plays in shaping mindsets around an issue but are often stuck when it comes to developing an investment strategy to help influence that narrative. Adamec Communications has supported dozens of foundations to do just that.

Field Analysis

When Foundations want to stand out, it helps to have perspective on what the rest of the field is doing. Adamec Communications can take a look across your area of interest and develop recommendations on how to use your philanthropic power to carve out a new platform.

Movement Building

We don’t believe movements are built. They are joined. But what a Foundation can do with their investments is help seed the field of organizers and advocates and help build their capacity to do what they do best. Adamec Communications can help develop this strategy for you.

The scariest part about protecting your good name is that you don’t have to have done anything wrong in order for an attack to do real damage. The social impact sector is wrought with tales of woe; a poorly considered tweet takes down a CEO, an organization forced to distance itself from a board member, a political group targets a nonprofit with relentless smears. Today’s social impact organizations are increasingly finding themselves in unfamiliar waters. Adamec Communications can help plan for the unexpected, react when it happens, and consider your vulnerabilities in ways that will keep your reputation intact.

Reputation Work

• A prominent school asked Adamec Communications to help them strategize how to handle inappropriate behavior by its headmaster.
• An international service organization asked Adamec Communications to develop a preparedness plan that its dozens of chapters could adapt to their local context.
• An international human rights organization asked Adamec Communications to develop a crisis communications plan after a series of negative blogs targeted their brand.

Services

Risk Analysis  

Before you get in hot water, let’s take a look at what might get you there. We will dive deep into your operations, examine your field of allies and detractors, and assess your areas of vulnerability.

Crisis Planning 

We will plan for the scenarios that keep you up at night. Using our exclusive, formulaic approach to crisis planning, we will identify the X-factors – what we call crisis catalysts – that are at play and recommend strategies to neutralize them.

Spokesperson Coaching  

From selecting the most appropriate voices to coaching on tone, language, and timing, Shaun Adamec applies his years of experience in high-pressure situations to coach you on what to say and when.

Real time response

During times of high stress, our brains are incapable of operating at full capacity. Adamec Communications offers the calming, professional presence necessary to regain perspective and see the path forward.