Volunteer: Marketing & Communications Strategy and Operating Playbook

About Birdhouse Fly Away

Birdhouse Fly Away is a growing Sacramento nonprofit creating hands-on workforce experiences, mentorship, and career pathways for emerging adults ages 18–26. Since receiving our 501(c)(3) status in 2023, we have grown our impact significantly through volunteer leadership, community partnerships, industry mentors, and earned-revenue community service projects without traditional funding support or structures.

About the Opportunity

Our impact has grown faster than our communications capacity. We have strong participant outcomes, success stories, partnerships, and programs, but our website, social media, and outreach do not yet consistently communicate who we are, what makes our workforce model unique, or how people can get involved. With a lean, largely volunteer-led team, communications has mostly been managed by our Executive Director alongside programming, partnerships, fundraising, and operations. While this grassroots approach helped us build early traction, it is not sustainable as we scale.

We are now preparing to bring in interns and volunteers to expand our capacity. Before doing so, we need an experienced communications professional to help us create the strategy and structure they can successfully operate within. We also need support clarifying our audiences and messaging, strengthening our content strategy, and creating a practical communications playbook and a quarterly plan.

Project Goal

By the end of this project, Birdhouse Fly Away would like a clear, practical Marketing & Communications Strategy that our interns, volunteers, and staff can begin implementing immediately.

Deliverables

• Communications Assessment: Review our website, social media, and current messaging to identify strengths, gaps, and priorities.
• Audience & Messaging Framework: Define our key audiences including participants, employers, partners, mentors, funders, sponsors, and donors, and the core messages and calls to action for each.
• Content Strategy: Establish content themes, platform recommendations, posting cadence, and guidance for telling participant, partner, project, and impact stories.
• Quarterly Communications Plan: Provide an actionable 90-day roadmap with priorities, content activities, and measurable goals that align.
• Communications Playbook: Create a simple, repeatable workflow for collecting stories, developing and approving content, publishing, tracking engagement, and following up on opportunities.

Success Criteria

Success means Birdhouse has an organized communications system that does not depend solely on our Executive Director. New interns and volunteers should be able to step in, understand our audiences and messaging, and confidently execute the strategy. Ultimately, the completed project should help us turn our existing impact into greater visibility, credibility, partnerships, funding, and opportunities for the young adults we serve.

Our Mission

At Birdhouse Fly Away, our mission is to disrupt generational cycles of circumstantial oppression by expanding the mindsets of young people and helping them realize their untapped potential. We are committed to empowering youth to rise above barriers and reach new heights.