Community Relations Overview
Transcript
[First slide: Title slide]
Robert Hornsby:
Welcome to Virtual Communications Lab. Today is Tuesday, February 23rd, and today's topic is “Communicating to Neighbors.” And we're joined by Victoria Benitez and Bashar Makhay. Take it away, guys.
[Slide show vanishes from screen]
Victoria Benitez:
Hi, everyone, I'm Victoria Benitez. I'm an Associate Vice President for Communications and Community Affairs here at Columbia. Or not here at Columbia. [Gestures to her surroundings, which are her home.] I know many of you, so it's good to see you. It's been a long time. I hope you and your families are all well.
I'm just gonna give you a little bit of background about myself and how I kind of got to Columbia. I am a native New Yorker. I grew up in West Harlem where I currently—I still live. I've lived in the same apartment, right behind me, since 1964. So, I always like to tell people that to give perspective. I joined Columbia in 2007. I primarily worked on Manhattanville then. My 24/7 job was fielding all of the media questions about the expansion, and needless to say it was a bit tense. My history is I've worked at numerous not-for-profits in New York as a Director of Public Relations, including Studio Museum, the Museum for African Art, BAM. And you know, I used to even work with, like, George Calderaro at the Studio Museum, so I'm giving a shout out.
George Calderaro:
Alright, alright, alright!
Victoria:
I'll get a shout out to you.
My primary responsibility at Columbia is really to promote and represent us in the community and in the media because of my having lived here as long as I have, and my family was always very involved with community, with this community. So, I do both; I wear both hats. My special focus is on programs that are, in fact, rooted in the community. Some of these are, like, the Double Discovery Center, which I'm proud to say I'm alum from 1977; the Freedom and Citizenship program that's actually run out of the Center for American Studies; the Bundles Scholars, which is a Government and Community Affairs initiative; Community Impact. I mean, I work with several—a number of you.
Part of what I also do is just, it's enhancing communication partnerships with you guys across Morningside, Manhattanville, and uptown at the Medical Center. And it's really about highlighting Columbia's work in the community. I'd like to say, you know, as opposed to my other colleagues at Columbia News who deal primarily with promoting research and, you know, things of that sort, what I like to promote and what I'm here to promote are actual stories about people.
You know, I don't know if you've seen over the years, I've been able to get, you know, student coverage of student grads, you know, front page of the Daily News. You know, a lot of our local media partners, that's what they're looking for. They're looking for any programs that we're doing that benefit the community or that the community is, in fact, able to sign up for, join, whatever.
I think for this group, and I think it's important to say, that not everybody understands the local community dynamic. There are, like, all these different leadership bases. There's, you know, there's the international influences of our large minority immigrant populations, as well as, you know, African Americans. We have quite a mix in the community that is just around Columbia.
There's a local demographic slide. Robert, could you show that just for people to get an idea of how it breaks up in the neighborhood?
Robert:
Sure. Give me a second to open your document.
Victoria:
Sure. But, it's sometimes surprising to people what a large Latino population we have in our neighborhood, but then we also work very closely with Central Harlem and East Harlem. We partner with organizations, and then my job is to help promote it. And Bashar Makhay will talk about, you know, some of our platforms in that respect.
Let me see here. I'm also always identifying really interesting projects, you know, and interesting events. So, you know, if you have any issues, if you want to reach out to community-based media and you need some guidance, please feel free to call me.
Here we go.
Robert:
Almost there.
Victoria:
Okay.
Robert:
So you wanted the community demographic slide?
Victoria:
Yes, please
Robert:
In just a second. Keep talking.
Victoria:
Okay. [Laughs.] Well, it's–
[Zoom screen share starts: Niche webpage]
Ah there we go.
Robert:
How's that?
Victoria:
Yes.
Robert:
Carry on.
Victoria:
Okay, so you see– Could you move up? Yeah, the Harlem demographics. It's interesting. I mean, it is a very poor community, so anything that we have to to share–
Robert:
I think you would be referring to these two numbers? [Moves cursor over two household income brackets, which show 30% of household income is under $25k, and 16% is between $25-$44k.
Victoria:
Yes, yes.
Robert:
So, that's 40% of the community is under 44,000 a year.
Victoria:
Yes, and seven– You know, people here, it is a real community, you know. Thank you. You could–-
[Zoom screen share stops]
I'm happy to share those demographics with whoever is interested. We have been developing these communication products with a community focus for the last couple of years. I'm sure you've all seen it. What we're finding is that—our Bashar will speak more in detail about it—but we've got quite a bit of attention on what it is that we're doing. I mean, for instance, tomorrow I'm doing a Zoom presentation with leaders of community-based organizations, and we have close to 50 who are joining us. so, when we have those kinds of opportunities, you know, I reach out to the community that I know and people that I know uptown, wherever, to be sure that we all, you know, that the word is getting out. There are publications that we–
[Background noise starts from another person]
–consider local, which are our publications like Hatch—like Patch–
[Background noise stops]
–like Manhattan Times, even the Daily News I consider local, but Harlem News, you know, I Love the Upper West Side, you know. And believe it or not, these platforms and publications have quite a large circulation, especially amongst our community residents. I think though, in many instances, if you're inviting people from the community, you want to also try and have it translated into Spanish. I think that that is always an important thing for us to do because it makes people feel like, you know, like we care.
I also do public relations and support public relations around major university initiatives. There's Manhattanville, which by the way we've got two new buildings coming online in January of ‘22—the business school. So, you know there's going to be a lot of news about that as we get closer. My office also, me primarily, I like to judge, like, the newsworthiness of developments that we're doing, you know, the developments concerning the expansion.
And what I think is key here is just being sensitive to the local political environment. I have, on numerous occasions, seen press releases, you know, which we frown upon now, but still there are many people who still do them. But I remember, many years ago when I first started at Columbia, seeing a press release from Mailman talking about Latinos in a way that I knew that they would feel it was offensive. And I was able to, you know, intercede, talk to them, and they, you know, they reworked it, they reworded it, and then they sent it out.
If you guys have news that you're trying to get out to the community, you just have to really make sure you're sensitive, especially linguistically, to how to get your message across to them so that they're not feeling like, sometimes, you know, it's a little over their heads in that, just that it'd be over anyone's head, that if it's something that is scientific or medical or, you know, it's, you know. It's just again, it's just about being really, really focused on trying to find the right balance.
Times have changed a lot since I started in this business. I started in this business back in the late 80s. God, I'm scared. In the late 80s. You know, we used to pitch stories to journalists. You'd get on the phone, you'd fax them once faxes were invented. But now, we are more inclined to use our own platforms to get our news out, which has actually been quite successful.
But, the other thing with community-based media that is key if you are engaging with them is actually calling them, talking to them, you know, making them a contact, not just an email. Because I think then you have more of an opportunity to have them, you know, publish stories about things you're working on. The other thing about some of these publications is that if you write the story, they’ll print it verbatim. But again, you'd have to see the story through the eyes of a community resident and write it for them.
I have been forwarding articles that I find on our websites—on our web pages—to the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce who has then been sending it out to people like Harlem News, Amsterdam News, you know, and we've gotten a lot of pickup from that. So, if there are any of these kinds of articles that you think are, you know, are important for that segment, you know, the people who live just around the corner. You know, let– There's a way Neighbors, that you can put your information in. Bashar will give you all that because, I have to say, I'm a dinosaur when it comes to technical stuff. I'm, you know, I'm learning as we go along.
I'm thinking that I've covered everything I wanted to, and what I'd like to do now is introduce Bashar because I think that you guys will probably have more questions than what I'm spouting, so I’m going to introduce my colleague Bashar Makhay who is a Director of Communications for Government and Community Affairs. Bashar?
Bashar Makhay:
Great. Thanks, Victoria.
So real briefly, I'm just pulling everything up that I want to talk through.
So, for my portion of the presentation, I'm going to go over a little bit of what GCA is, the entities within GCA, but then also how we use our Neighbors platform. I also want to make this a bit more interactive, and then sort of get a sense of what folks are doing now to engage with their communities. And maybe we can talk a bit more about that also when we have a conversation about how best to reach those communities in the Q&A section.
So I'm just gonna pull something up real quick. I can screen share. Right, Robert?
Robert:
Yes
Bashar:
Okay. All right. Sorry, my internet's acting a little off today.
[Lowers his voice] All right. So, log out and screen share. I think this is the right screen share, but we'll find out. Screen sharing has failed to start. All right, try that again.
[Screen sharing starts: Government and Community Affairs website]
[Speaking at regular volume] How about that?
Robert:
Good.
Bashar:
Y'all see the GCA website on your screen?
Robert:
Yes.
Bashar:
Great. And I'm just gonna pull you all up so I can see folks too.
All right so, the department of Government and Community Affairs. Some of this may be repetition for y'all, and some of this may be new information. But, the department of Government and Community Affairs on Morningside and the Department of Government and Community Affairs at the Medical Center are the university’s primary liaisons to the local community and elected officials.
Originally, the department was really focused on a lot of those one-on-one relationships with these different community organizations and leaders, community boards, and elected officials. And as time has progressed and our priorities have shifted and changed; while that continues to be a major focus, we also are doing different programming in the community, and we're also engaging on the community, especially with COVID-19, on a more digital level, which I'll talk about a little bit more when I introduce Neighbors.
But first, I wanted to introduce y’all to the website for GCA. And real quickly, GCA is gca.columbia.edu. It's really more of an informational site and not a site you'd engage with on a regular basis.
[He clicks on the “Community Affairs” menu link, which opens that page]
It's more to go and get information about who's doing what and who's responsible for what.
[He clicks on the “Government Relations” menu link, which opens that page]
Under the community affairs tab you get information about community fairs, under government relations you'll find out who's working in government relations.
And, more importantly, is this programs and initiatives tab.
[He clicks on the “Programs & Initiatives” menu link, which opens the page]
Which we have here, which talks about all the initiatives that sort of take place under the office of Government and Community Affairs. That includes the Community Scholars program, which we are actually going through and looking for new community scholars. But this has actually been an amazing program in a way that GCA has been able to connect individuals in the community that have been trying to gain the knowledge and resources of Columbia in order to achieve a goal or a project that they're trying to achieve.
There's also some other things that I think are a bit more legal requirements, like Constitution Day, that we promote. You know, I guess there's more to be done there.
There are Criminal Justice Initiatives that happen under GCA, so if any of your work is related to criminal justice change, I really recommend coming here and getting connected to all the different entities that are happening.
Voter registration. If your entity is doing voter registration, you're also trying to connect with the community. A part of our role is to connect with the community through voter registration and to get more people to register to vote.
The blood drive is also another way in which we try to engage with the community on ways that not only galvanizing the Columbia community, but also getting community members to join.
And then this here is the collaborative for community programs, and now.
[He clicks on the “Collaborative of Community Programs for Youth and Families” link, which opens the page]
So these are all—some of you may be members of this—but it's a large collaborative of organizations within the university that are reaching out through local schools. Right? And engaging with those local schools to help the students, whether that be through tutoring programs, whether that be through, like, GED TASC programs, so on and so forth. These departments within the university are doing outreach in the schools in community board 9, sometimes community board 12, also. So, this is a good list. If you're working with youth and you're not engaging with the people on this list, I highly recommend that you do and reach out. The more collaboration we can get, the better.
And so that pretty much sums up the GCA website and the information you can get there.
Another entity within GCA–
[He switches to another tab on his web browser, which is the Columbia Community Service website]
–is Columbia Community Service. And many of you may know Columbia Community Service as the entity in which you donate to and then our collective funds are then granted out to community organizations that need it. I think last year we gave around $280,000 to community organizations from donations from Columbia employees.
But there's also another aspect, which is connecting the resources of the university with the actual grantees.
[He clicks on the “Grantees” link, which is one of the options under the “Our Impact” menu tab. The “Grantees” page opens.]
These are the grantee organizations, and you can go through– There's categories if you want to narrow it down, but these are the grantee organizations. And if you're trying to partner with one of these organizations but you're not getting a foot in, Columbia Community Service is a great resource. Joan Griffith-Lee there is very happy to connect a department at the university that's doing work and wants to partner with a non-profit on it.
And, I think this is an often missed opportunity in that sense that people don't realize is there. If you're trying to get, let's say, alumni or staff to volunteer with these community organizations, CCS also does a great job of connecting the two, connecting you and the organizations together. And so, that is just a brief summary of what Columbia Community Service does.
[He clicks on the “Apply for a Grant” menu link, which opens the page. He then clicks on the “Columbia Community Service: Neighbors Helping Neighbors” heading, which opens the website’s homepage.]
And you can contact me or the contact information is here on the page–
[He scrolls to the bottom of the page to the footer]
–about what they're doing and how to get more involved.
[He switches to another tab on his web browser, which is the Neighbors website]
So Neighbors, which is probably which– Show of hands or if you all are comfortable using the reaction emoji system on Zoom, who here has been to the Neighbors’ site or heard of Neighbors?
I'm not doing my job because only like, okay half of you– All right. Good. [Laughs.] All right. So, some of you have visited and know what Neighbors is.
So essentially, we found out through our research is that the community doesn't care as much about departments at the university as we would like to think they do. The community sees Columbia University as a monolith. It's just Columbia University is this, and this is what Columbia University– Zuckerman may be doing amazing things, GCA may be doing amazing things. In the end, they just see this is what Columbia University is doing, and if a department at the university happens not to be doing something, again they just see it as Columbia University is not doing something right.
So, we also found that the community was a bit lost in all the websites, right? Going to the GCA website, going to CCS website, going to the variety of department websites in order to find information about what is available from the university. Right? So with that, we sat down and we thought, “What is a good approach? How should we be reaching out to the community?” And we realize having a centralized site that isn't tied to any one department is probably the best approach, and that's where Neighbors came into play.
And so Columbia Neighbors initiative to be a hub for our neighbors to come to see what events are available from Columbia and from our community partners, what resources are available from Columbia, what to do in the local community, local news. We're trying to be a resource to meet the community needs, and we know what the community wants a bit because we have analytics based on what we've done, and we see what the community responds to, and so we try to promote that.
So, just real briefly I'm going to do a quick overview of the site and what we offer, but I think if you have a community program and you're not listed in our resources directory–
[He clicks on the “Find a Resource” button, which opens the page]
–please email [email protected] immediately after this.
We created this directory to be in an easy way for community members to, let's say–
[He clicks on the “Age Groups” filter, which brings up the different age group categories]
–find programming for children–
[He clicks on the “Children” tag, which narrows down the results. He then clicks on the “Categories” filter, which brings up the different programming categories.]
–that happens to also be art.
[He clicks on the “Art & Artists” tag, which narrows down the results to only one program: Artists Reaching Out.]
And then found this, let's say, Artists Reaching Out. Right? And so we want to just make it easy for community members to find what's available.
[He clicks on the “Categories” filter, which brings up the different programming categories. He unchecks the “Art & Artists” tag, which expands the results. He then clicks on the “Age Groups” filter, which brings up the different age group categories. He clicks on the “Adults” tag, which changes the results.]
Even if we change this to adults and we change this to education–
[He clicks on the “Categories” filter, which brings up the different programming categories. He clicks on the “Education” tag, which narrows the results.]
–education programs that are available for adults in the community, right? So this was one part of the initiative.
The other part–
[He clicks on the “News” menu link, which opens the page. As he continues to talk, he scrolls down the page and runs his cursor over the different news articles.]
–is also just highlighting news in the community as varied as construction updates that are happening in and around campus, new restaurants that are opening up. We get a lot from our partners at Facilities, and we really appreciate the content partnership that we have there.
But also highlighting different programs, like the work that the Center for Justice is doing, CUIMC’s vaccine volunteer program, you know, losing members of the community, and sometimes, you know, there just aren't resources out there talking about these things. So we're also serving a need that doesn't exist—that isn't being met is what I meant to say.
And so you can see here– And we're also happy to write about your programs, right? So if you have a milestone or if you've launched something and you want to get it out into the community, we're looking for content. We're desperate for content. So we are always happy to reproduce your own content or take a look at developing new content based on what it is that you're working on.
You can also always submit stuff to us through our submission form–
[He changes the website URL to neighbors.columbia.edu/submit]
–which is here. It's taking a lovely time to load. Hopefully it doesn't take this long for you all.
[The submission form page opens]
But through our submission form, you can put your information and anything you'd like us to include, whether promoting something on social media, news stories, so on and so forth, we're happy to do it. I will say, and I just should piggyback on Victoria's comment about income levels–
Unidentified attendee:
[Indiscernible speech]
Bashar:
–we understand– Hello?
Unidentified attendee:
Kay.
Bashar:
Someone have a question? No, okay. We understand that people’s–
Unidentified attendee:
Okay, cool. Okay.
Bashar:
I think someone's unmuted.
Robert:
Please mute yourself until Bashar finishes and then we'll do question and answer.
Cassandra Nathan:
I just muted her.
Bashar:
Thanks. So, you can submit something and we'll get it out there, and we have a pretty extensive reach. We send an e-news twice a month our list—this is also showing that Neighbors is actually a product that people want in the community—our list when we launched Neighbors, which is about a year and a few months ago, was only about 1,500 members of the community, and we have over 6,000 people on our email list now that have signed up because they're interested in knowing what Columbia university has and what's available. And so we're also a resource to get the word out in that level.
And I don't want to have to go in too much detail–
[He moves his cursor to the “Manhattanville Campus” menu link, which opens the drop-down menu]
–but also for those of you that know the Manhattanville website is no longer, it's been integrated into neighbors. And I think the long-term goal here is that they'll be Morningside, Manhattanville, Uptown, Washington Heights. This will be a resource for everybody no matter where you are. If you live adjacent to the university, this is where you can come and get your information.
It doesn't mean department websites still aren't important. It's important to put that information there, but to have a one-stop shop for community members to come to is very useful. You'll notice–
[He clicks on the “Local Events” menu link, which opens the page. He then scrolls through the events.]
–even in local events, some of the stuff is not even hosted by– like, join the community board, things like that. We get it sent from the community board. “We want you to promote this.” And we get this information out there.
[He switches to another tab on his web browser, which is the Columbia University Neighbors’ Facebook page]
We also have a following through our Facebook–
[He switches to another tab on his web browser, which is the Columbia University Neighbors’ Instagram account]
–Twitter, and Instagram.
[He switches to another tab on his web browser, which is the Columbia University Neighbors’ Instagram account. He immediately switches back to the Columbia University Neighbors’ Facebook page.]
We're still growing our following, I'm not gonna lie. It's pretty low.
[He runs his cursor over the Facebook page’s number of followers, which is 1,382 people]
Some of you may have even much larger followings than what we have, but we notice that our engagement and our impressions are much higher than you think they'd be. So example, on– I think if I exit this view–
[He clicks the button “Exit View As”]
So this is our admin side. You'll see in the last 28 days, partially because we've done a little bit of advertising, which we're also happy to do for you all, is that we've reached 10,000 people in the past month. Right? So our posts are getting viewed by a lot of people. And for a page on Facebook that only has a thousand people that liked it, that's pretty big.
If you have a post, for example, on your social media and you want us to amplify your message, tag us and then we can quickly reshare that. Maggie, which is here, you know, is our social media pro, and if you haven't met Maggie, you'll get to know Maggie as you work more closely with us.
[He switches to another tab on his web browser, which is the Columbia University Neighbors’ Instagram account]
So that's our Facebook, our Twitter, and Instagram.
[He switches to another tab on his web browser, which is the Columbia University Neighbors’ Twitter account]
I don't want to go too much in detail. Acacia has also done, like, an amazing social media workshop.
But there is something I would like to discuss also with y'all is the death of the flyer. I think this has been a pain point for a lot of us, even us promoting things on Neighbors, is oftentimes there'll be an event that Columbia University departments host and there'll be a creation of a flyer. And the creation of a flyer, especially in the time of COVID-19 where the vast majority of things are digital, is very difficult to help promote what it is that you're doing.
If you think about promoting via Facebook, the information that's typically on a post—in the message of a post—the image itself is actually getting you to look at it, and the information is usually listed someplace else—on a website somewhere—and things like that. And so I think there was a history of, “We need to have something printed that we're able to give people in their hands.” While there's still a value there, we have to sort of move away from that way of doing things.
And so whatever it is that we're doing, we should be thinking about: we need an image that describes what this program is trying to accomplish, and we also need to make sure it's listed on a website that people can get information, sign up, register, so on. If you're using Eventbrite, great, but the people that are promoting it also need to be able to use your images and promote it.
And so real briefly, there are tools. Because I know a lot of you may be a part of a department that only has one– You are the communications person, and you are the outreach person, and you're holding multiple hats. But there are tools–
[He switches to another tab on his web browser, which is Adobe Spark]
–like Adobe Spark, which is a great tool that helps you create an image, and it will automatically size them for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.
[He switches to another tab on his web browser, which is Pixlr]
There's also Pixlr, which will help you size things and create things the way that you may want them.
[He switches to another tab on his web browser, which is Canva]
And a fan favorite that I don't use but many people in our department use is Canva, and to get images formatted the way you need to get them formatted to promote what it is that you want to promote.
[He switches to another tab on his web browser, which is Columbia University’s YouTube channel]
And lastly is YouTube. And I don't know if y'all have your own YouTubes, or if you've considered working with central communications on getting something out with our YouTube. But we've hosted a variety of town halls from Zoom.
Have people here done that? For example, had a Zoom with the panelists and had it streamed to Facebook or YouTube so people can watch it?
So, that's something we're happy to help you with.
Oh, we got a few people.
Sometimes, people say only 150 people saw it, but for me if 150 people watched an entire YouTube video that's an hour and a half long, I think that's quite successful considering we probably would be very happy if 50 people showed up in person and watched and participated for an hour and a half. So, we're happy to have conversations about getting content that's useful and informative to your audiences via YouTube or other platforms that we have, and we also work closely with, you know, as a part of central communication, to amplify those messages where appropriate via Columbia channels. Right?
So an example of a town hall–
[He types “gale brewer” into the search function on the YouTube channel. Results appear.]
I think if I just search for Gale Brewer. So, we did a bunch of these virtual town halls with the community around various topics, co-hosted with Manhattan borough president Gale Brewer, for example. And they were quite successful as a means to engage with our audience.
So that's just another thing to think about since we're in this digital era and we can't do in-person events because of coronavirus, of these alternative ways that don't cost much. You essentially just need a Zoom pro account, which is $25 a year from the university, and a connection to YouTube, and then also of course your outreach efforts and reaching out to the community.
And I think that just gives pretty much an overview of everything, and I want to spend the last 20 minutes sort of, like, thinking about some of the challenges that you all have faced and how we can help you think through them.
So, I'm going to stop screen sharing once I find the Zoom thing.
Where is the Zoom thing? Oh there it is.
[Zoom screen share stops]
Stop share.
Victoria:
While Bashar is looking for his Zoom share, you know, the question of, “What are some of the biggest challenges we face?” It is very much what Bashar was talking about. You know, most people see us really as, you know, this ivory tower, and 1968 didn't help. And unfortunately even for people who weren't even thought of in 1968, they still seem to want to go back to that when they're talking about Columbia in the community. I must tell you, though, that is changing. I feel it changing with the people that I live around who are feeling less and less like we, you know, we don't care or we're only out for ourselves. So I think that that was a question that came up.
And, you know, the biggest challenges I find are linguistic, you know, the linguistic challenge; the monetary challenge because, you know, we can't afford to support every, you know, community organization or initiative, but we give it our best shot.
So now I think we're about to start taking questions. Robert?
Robert:
Yeah, so we have a couple of questions in the chat already. Cassandra's going to lead us off with that, and if people have other questions, please put them in the chat and we'll address those as we move along. Cassandra?
Cassandra:
Hi, guys. So, before we begin, I noticed that there are probably about 15 people who included their name and their title. So, if you joined us a little late, please be sure to include your name, your title, school, department, institute. I'll copy and paste that in the chat below. We just want to be mindful of who's here with us today.
So, thank you, Bashar and Victoria, for your wonderful presentation. So, one of the questions that came up outside of the biggest challenges are, “What are examples of schools or departments that have active programs with the local community?”
Victoria:
Oh my god. Well, Community Impact is huge. I don't know if you all know this, but their high school diploma—you know, we call them GEDs, they call them something else now, TASC— is one of the best in the state. They created a program in the summertime that had– They were able to graduate, you know, over 200 community residents, and it's quite popular.
The other school that does a lot with community is Engineering. Engineering has a very active community engagement department and programs that they're involved with. I would say also Teachers College is amazing, especially around early childhood and messages of that sort.
And who else? School of social work. School of Social Work has a multitude of programs that they have, you know, that they work with community-based organizations, or they work on issues of justice or mental health, things of that kind. And the Medical Center also has quite a few programs and community-based clinics and special programs for diabetes and high blood pressure and stuff, you know, and things that are medical related.
Did I answer your question?
Cassandra:
You did, absolutely. In abundance. I'm grateful for that.
By the way, you guys, if you have questions, feel free to chime in. You're more than welcome to interact directly with Victoria and Bashar. I'm just helping to field the questions along, but they're here for you guys. So, can you talk about the difference between creating awareness and meaningful community engagement?
Bashar:
I think that's why we still have an Office of Government and Community Affairs, right? So, there's a lot of that interpersonal stuff that takes place, attending community board meetings being– Which by the way, if you haven't spoken at a community board meeting, like community board nine, or you haven't tried to do that, our office—the government team and our office—is happy to try to make those connections, and has literally hand-held people to have those conversations.
I think it's a matter of also looking at, like, the Columbia Community Service grantees, and it's a difference of putting on science programming, for example, for youth and just getting the word out, and then actually going into the schools or going with the non-profits that are in community board nine and saying, “Hey, we're doing this program. Do you want to collaborate, and do you wanna work on this with us?” I think the most successful programs are when there's a collaboration. You know, if the end goal is to provide science education, for example, to youth, then working with as many people to reach the target audience is quite important.
So, I think thinking through those things is important, and then actually getting the message to your audiences, to Robert's point. Getting a flyer and just putting it on your social media probably isn't the best approach, but if you're paying for an ad and maybe targeting it towards your target demographics on those social media platforms, or getting us on Neighbors to push it via our our twice monthly e-news or via one of our other platforms, is another way just meeting your audiences where they are. And I will say, community-based organizations have been doing this for a while, and they have a list of people that we don't have access to, and so I think they're going to be your best partners in reaching the community.
Cassandra:
If someone's, like, new in communications, to your point, what would you recommend? Like, what steps would you recommend that they take to identify the best way to attract their audience or get information to their audience?
Bashar:
So, I think to Victoria's part of her presentation showing those demographics, some of you may already know that. But also, if your audience is pretty specific and you're not sure how to reach them, I think having a conversation with us or having a conversation with some of those community organizations that are reaching those audiences is a start. But, you know, there are audiences that we're still not reaching with Neighbors, which requires us to still do, like, print advertising or more traditional ways of reaching out to those community members. And certain people, say that attend community board meetings, that aren't interested in getting on email lists or doing social media, being a part of those meetings, and those settings.
And Victoria, you can add to that.
Victoria:
No, I wanted to apologize because I also wanted to mention that in Manhattanville, we are doing a active community engagement through the forum and through the– We work with the Zuckerman Institute and we do a community day once a semester where we, you know, we have all these activities for young children in the community like scientific, you know, brain exercises and stuff, and I know that the forum is also doing quite a robust community engagement program. So, I forgot to mention them, so I wanted to be sure that I gave them a shout out.
Bashar:
Yeah.
Cassandra:
Also, some of the feedback that I received in general, we have some newcomers to Columbia University and some people that might have transitioned in their role, and so there's a little bit of, how do we say, a lot of nuances, especially with COVID. How do you, if at all, would you recommend someone gauge success now with what they're doing communications-wise? So, say for example, somebody wants to be able to present, you know, to their superior, to their boss, or something like that. How do you guys gauge success, say with your website, or are people reading these newsletters, etc. amidst this pandemic?
Bashar:
So I'll talk a little bit about technology, and then if folks have more specific questions, I can talk about that. So, we rate success based off of participation. We rate success based off of our analytics about who's visiting our website, and how many people are visiting our website, and what pages they're going to. We analyze that and, for example, if an event is very popular on our website, we tend to see this apparently is what our audience is looking for. At the same time, if an event is not popular but is a focus area that we should be working on, I think that tells us where we need to focus more energy or reevaluate our efforts.
Another resource is Columbia sites, right? So if you all have a website, if you have a Columbia Site site, I highly suggest working with that team. If you're not familiar with analytics, they do have training programs and will guide you through that.
But we also rely on feedback from our community partners. So, if a community partner says, “Thank you so much for promoting this, I heard from a lot of people that they found out through you,” we've gotten that too, but we just collect all that information.
But analytics is probably the most useful. And email clicks, we can see which, for example, events or news articles people are clicking on the most when we send our e-blasts out, so we can think about what the community—what our list—is interested in. And I rely also on, for example, Phoebe and Flores and the community relations team to tell us what they think the community is interested, and maybe it is that our list isn't reflective of the community that we should have, so we should focus on outreach to get more people to sign up for our email blast, for example.
So, it's a back and forth. There is no, like, one place to get all those analytics, and some people think it's a science. I haven't mastered that science, so I think it's more of a qualitative thing for me.
Cassandra:
So I noticed that Jessica has a question, so Jessica, I'll pass the floor to you.
Jessica Reyes:
Hi everyone, I'm Jessica Reyes. I actually work very closely with Victoria Benitez and Bashar. You've probably seen my name in many emails. But I just wanted to further bring some attention to you guys, and Bashar, I have this question for you. Maybe some people don't necessarily know who to contact in GCA, so who would be the best contact to begin that process?
Bashar:
So, if you are trying to get in contact with elected officials and get that relationship, Loftin Flowers is probably the best person to contact. If you're trying to reach out to community boards, Tricia Shimamura is the best person to contact. If you're trying to reach out to community organizations, Phoebe and Victoria are great people to reach out to. If you're trying to reach out to youth-serving organizations, Henry Danner, which runs the Connecting Youth Initiative. And I'll also say not GCA, but Kecia Hayes at Double Discovery is an amazing person to engage with around youth programming and is super collaborative.
And then if you're trying to just communicate to your audience, if you tell us who your audience is you know how to communicate, we can use Neighbors as a platform and you can just contact [email protected], which gets me, Jessica, and Maggie. And we will figure out a plan to get via our platform's word out about your program or event. And if you're trying to do something more of a larger scale, also email me or the Neighbors email and talk about what it is that you're trying to accomplish, and we can figure out whether we have the resources to help you accomplish what you're trying to accomplish.
And then Odelia just sent a message about– Did I answer that, Jess?
Jessica:
Yeah, that was great. There's also a question prior, before you get to Odelia. Holly wants to know if there's any, like, connections or contact with PR people at government agencies like NSF or DOE, and she prefers to connect with.
Bashar:
I was going to– I think Holly hopped off, but I'm going to email her, she– Oh there you are. Okay. Yeah, I would say Loftin would be the best person to talk to, but then also depending on what it is he– there may be someone at, like, CUIMC GCA to talk to.
I can't hear you, Holly.
Holly Evarts:
CYM what?
Bashar:
The Medical Center's GCA.
Holly:
Oh, oh, oh, oh, okay. Yeah.
Bashar:
Loftin would be the first person to reach out to, and you're also welcome to CC me and just say, you know, “At this meeting, Bashar recommended I reach out to you.”
Holly:
The reason I asked is I've been CC'd on a couple of emails from the DOE to him, and that's all news, which I think is great because they're pulling us in more, so I want to be able to reach back out to them. So I'll check in with them. Great. Thank–
Bashar:
Yeah, Loftin's great in that aspect.
Holly:
Super, thanks.
Bashar:
And Spanish. Victoria, I'll need your help with this, but I'll just say what Neighbors does, and then we can go. So, we only have one communications product that's in Spanish, and that is—which I didn't really go over, but it's included in our Neighbors e-news—it’s called the Neighbors Bulletin, and if you go on the Neighbors’ website and you scroll down, you'll find a description of the bulletin. But we include that in the e-news, and it's in English and Spanish. And we do promote via our social in Spanish, and we do submit this bulletin.
So, we find with the bulletin, what people are doing is English-speaking individuals of organizations that have Spanish-speaking clients will take that bulletin and forward it or a community board will put it in its Spanish resources, and so we found that to be very useful.
But the reality is a Spanish-speaking person, while they may like our Facebook page, if they don't speak English, they're probably less likely to like our Facebook page, our Twitter, our Instagram, even visit our website on a regular basis because it's not in Spanish. And even if we translated our website entirely into Spanish, some of the resources will be helpful.
But, I think if you're truly interested in providing programming and reaching Spanish-speaking communities, you're gonna want to make sure that that person can go to a website that's completely in Spanish, that that person can get information, that person can ask questions in Spanish to the person that's running the event, and also if they end up, for example, attending the event, that somebody there will be able to– You know, we translate the bulletin into Spanish, but not all the programming is in Spanish. So if they see the bulletin, go to the event and the entire event in English, they're going to be discouraged, and their relationship with Columbia is going to be challenged.
And Victoria, you’d know better about this.
Victoria:
Yeah. I have connections to, like, translation services, like you know, that would do simultaneous translations during a Zoom meeting, which is really quite easy. But what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to promote it to a Spanish-speaking audience and then they'll sign on. But you know, you can't promote an event in just English and then have a translation because nobody who speaks Spanish would have signed up for it. So what I would suggest is if you do have events or things or even news that you want to get out to people in Spanish, you know, reach out to me and I'll put you in touch with a translation service that I think is really quite good and has a variety of different things they can do for you.
Any last questions?
Well, in closing, thank you guys for taking the time to meet with us today. I hope you've been somewhat informed about what we do. And I also want to say, I just looked at Christina Gray. I also love student veterans. Okay? And this [indiscernible] in General Studies is amazing
Christina Gray:
Yes, I'll have to reconnect with you on some veterans.
Victoria:
Please do, please do. But again, everyone, thank you so much for taking the time.
Robert:
Thank you, Victoria. Thank you, Bashar, Cassandra, and all the other partners and people that attended. We're gonna wind down. Our next session is next Tuesday at 2 p.m, and we hope to see you then. Thanks so much, everyone. Have a good day.
Victoria:
Bye, guys.
Robert Hornsby:
Welcome to Virtual Communications Lab. Today is Tuesday, February 23rd, and today's topic is “Communicating to Neighbors.” And we're joined by Victoria Benitez and Bashar Makhay. Take it away, guys.
[Slide show vanishes from screen]
Victoria Benitez:
Hi, everyone, I'm Victoria Benitez. I'm an Associate Vice President for Communications and Community Affairs here at Columbia. Or not here at Columbia. [Gestures to her surroundings, which are her home.] I know many of you, so it's good to see you. It's been a long time. I hope you and your families are all well.
I'm just gonna give you a little bit of background about myself and how I kind of got to Columbia. I am a native New Yorker. I grew up in West Harlem where I currently—I still live. I've lived in the same apartment, right behind me, since 1964. So, I always like to tell people that to give perspective. I joined Columbia in 2007. I primarily worked on Manhattanville then. My 24/7 job was fielding all of the media questions about the expansion, and needless to say it was a bit tense. My history is I've worked at numerous not-for-profits in New York as a Director of Public Relations, including Studio Museum, the Museum for African Art, BAM. And you know, I used to even work with, like, George Calderaro at the Studio Museum, so I'm giving a shout out.
George Calderaro:
Alright, alright, alright!
Victoria:
I'll get a shout out to you.
My primary responsibility at Columbia is really to promote and represent us in the community and in the media because of my having lived here as long as I have, and my family was always very involved with community, with this community. So, I do both; I wear both hats. My special focus is on programs that are, in fact, rooted in the community. Some of these are, like, the Double Discovery Center, which I'm proud to say I'm alum from 1977; the Freedom and Citizenship program that's actually run out of the Center for American Studies; the Bundles Scholars, which is a Government and Community Affairs initiative; Community Impact. I mean, I work with several—a number of you.
Part of what I also do is just, it's enhancing communication partnerships with you guys across Morningside, Manhattanville, and uptown at the Medical Center. And it's really about highlighting Columbia's work in the community. I'd like to say, you know, as opposed to my other colleagues at Columbia News who deal primarily with promoting research and, you know, things of that sort, what I like to promote and what I'm here to promote are actual stories about people.
You know, I don't know if you've seen over the years, I've been able to get, you know, student coverage of student grads, you know, front page of the Daily News. You know, a lot of our local media partners, that's what they're looking for. They're looking for any programs that we're doing that benefit the community or that the community is, in fact, able to sign up for, join, whatever.
I think for this group, and I think it's important to say, that not everybody understands the local community dynamic. There are, like, all these different leadership bases. There's, you know, there's the international influences of our large minority immigrant populations, as well as, you know, African Americans. We have quite a mix in the community that is just around Columbia.
There's a local demographic slide. Robert, could you show that just for people to get an idea of how it breaks up in the neighborhood?
Robert:
Sure. Give me a second to open your document.
Victoria:
Sure. But, it's sometimes surprising to people what a large Latino population we have in our neighborhood, but then we also work very closely with Central Harlem and East Harlem. We partner with organizations, and then my job is to help promote it. And Bashar Makhay will talk about, you know, some of our platforms in that respect.
Let me see here. I'm also always identifying really interesting projects, you know, and interesting events. So, you know, if you have any issues, if you want to reach out to community-based media and you need some guidance, please feel free to call me.
Here we go.
Robert:
Almost there.
Victoria:
Okay.
Robert:
So you wanted the community demographic slide?
Victoria:
Yes, please
Robert:
In just a second. Keep talking.
Victoria:
Okay. [Laughs.] Well, it's–
[Zoom screen share starts: Niche webpage]
Ah there we go.
Robert:
How's that?
Victoria:
Yes.
Robert:
Carry on.
Victoria:
Okay, so you see– Could you move up? Yeah, the Harlem demographics. It's interesting. I mean, it is a very poor community, so anything that we have to to share–
Robert:
I think you would be referring to these two numbers? [Moves cursor over two household income brackets, which show 30% of household income is under $25k, and 16% is between $25-$44k.
Victoria:
Yes, yes.
Robert:
So, that's 40% of the community is under 44,000 a year.
Victoria:
Yes, and seven– You know, people here, it is a real community, you know. Thank you. You could–-
[Zoom screen share stops]
I'm happy to share those demographics with whoever is interested. We have been developing these communication products with a community focus for the last couple of years. I'm sure you've all seen it. What we're finding is that—our Bashar will speak more in detail about it—but we've got quite a bit of attention on what it is that we're doing. I mean, for instance, tomorrow I'm doing a Zoom presentation with leaders of community-based organizations, and we have close to 50 who are joining us. so, when we have those kinds of opportunities, you know, I reach out to the community that I know and people that I know uptown, wherever, to be sure that we all, you know, that the word is getting out. There are publications that we–
[Background noise starts from another person]
–consider local, which are our publications like Hatch—like Patch–
[Background noise stops]
–like Manhattan Times, even the Daily News I consider local, but Harlem News, you know, I Love the Upper West Side, you know. And believe it or not, these platforms and publications have quite a large circulation, especially amongst our community residents. I think though, in many instances, if you're inviting people from the community, you want to also try and have it translated into Spanish. I think that that is always an important thing for us to do because it makes people feel like, you know, like we care.
I also do public relations and support public relations around major university initiatives. There's Manhattanville, which by the way we've got two new buildings coming online in January of ‘22—the business school. So, you know there's going to be a lot of news about that as we get closer. My office also, me primarily, I like to judge, like, the newsworthiness of developments that we're doing, you know, the developments concerning the expansion.
And what I think is key here is just being sensitive to the local political environment. I have, on numerous occasions, seen press releases, you know, which we frown upon now, but still there are many people who still do them. But I remember, many years ago when I first started at Columbia, seeing a press release from Mailman talking about Latinos in a way that I knew that they would feel it was offensive. And I was able to, you know, intercede, talk to them, and they, you know, they reworked it, they reworded it, and then they sent it out.
If you guys have news that you're trying to get out to the community, you just have to really make sure you're sensitive, especially linguistically, to how to get your message across to them so that they're not feeling like, sometimes, you know, it's a little over their heads in that, just that it'd be over anyone's head, that if it's something that is scientific or medical or, you know, it's, you know. It's just again, it's just about being really, really focused on trying to find the right balance.
Times have changed a lot since I started in this business. I started in this business back in the late 80s. God, I'm scared. In the late 80s. You know, we used to pitch stories to journalists. You'd get on the phone, you'd fax them once faxes were invented. But now, we are more inclined to use our own platforms to get our news out, which has actually been quite successful.
But, the other thing with community-based media that is key if you are engaging with them is actually calling them, talking to them, you know, making them a contact, not just an email. Because I think then you have more of an opportunity to have them, you know, publish stories about things you're working on. The other thing about some of these publications is that if you write the story, they’ll print it verbatim. But again, you'd have to see the story through the eyes of a community resident and write it for them.
I have been forwarding articles that I find on our websites—on our web pages—to the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce who has then been sending it out to people like Harlem News, Amsterdam News, you know, and we've gotten a lot of pickup from that. So, if there are any of these kinds of articles that you think are, you know, are important for that segment, you know, the people who live just around the corner. You know, let– There's a way Neighbors, that you can put your information in. Bashar will give you all that because, I have to say, I'm a dinosaur when it comes to technical stuff. I'm, you know, I'm learning as we go along.
I'm thinking that I've covered everything I wanted to, and what I'd like to do now is introduce Bashar because I think that you guys will probably have more questions than what I'm spouting, so I’m going to introduce my colleague Bashar Makhay who is a Director of Communications for Government and Community Affairs. Bashar?
Bashar Makhay:
Great. Thanks, Victoria.
So real briefly, I'm just pulling everything up that I want to talk through.
So, for my portion of the presentation, I'm going to go over a little bit of what GCA is, the entities within GCA, but then also how we use our Neighbors platform. I also want to make this a bit more interactive, and then sort of get a sense of what folks are doing now to engage with their communities. And maybe we can talk a bit more about that also when we have a conversation about how best to reach those communities in the Q&A section.
So I'm just gonna pull something up real quick. I can screen share. Right, Robert?
Robert:
Yes
Bashar:
Okay. All right. Sorry, my internet's acting a little off today.
[Lowers his voice] All right. So, log out and screen share. I think this is the right screen share, but we'll find out. Screen sharing has failed to start. All right, try that again.
[Screen sharing starts: Government and Community Affairs website]
[Speaking at regular volume] How about that?
Robert:
Good.
Bashar:
Y'all see the GCA website on your screen?
Robert:
Yes.
Bashar:
Great. And I'm just gonna pull you all up so I can see folks too.
All right so, the department of Government and Community Affairs. Some of this may be repetition for y'all, and some of this may be new information. But, the department of Government and Community Affairs on Morningside and the Department of Government and Community Affairs at the Medical Center are the university’s primary liaisons to the local community and elected officials.
Originally, the department was really focused on a lot of those one-on-one relationships with these different community organizations and leaders, community boards, and elected officials. And as time has progressed and our priorities have shifted and changed; while that continues to be a major focus, we also are doing different programming in the community, and we're also engaging on the community, especially with COVID-19, on a more digital level, which I'll talk about a little bit more when I introduce Neighbors.
But first, I wanted to introduce y’all to the website for GCA. And real quickly, GCA is gca.columbia.edu. It's really more of an informational site and not a site you'd engage with on a regular basis.
[He clicks on the “Community Affairs” menu link, which opens that page]
It's more to go and get information about who's doing what and who's responsible for what.
[He clicks on the “Government Relations” menu link, which opens that page]
Under the community affairs tab you get information about community fairs, under government relations you'll find out who's working in government relations.
And, more importantly, is this programs and initiatives tab.
[He clicks on the “Programs & Initiatives” menu link, which opens the page]
Which we have here, which talks about all the initiatives that sort of take place under the office of Government and Community Affairs. That includes the Community Scholars program, which we are actually going through and looking for new community scholars. But this has actually been an amazing program in a way that GCA has been able to connect individuals in the community that have been trying to gain the knowledge and resources of Columbia in order to achieve a goal or a project that they're trying to achieve.
There's also some other things that I think are a bit more legal requirements, like Constitution Day, that we promote. You know, I guess there's more to be done there.
There are Criminal Justice Initiatives that happen under GCA, so if any of your work is related to criminal justice change, I really recommend coming here and getting connected to all the different entities that are happening.
Voter registration. If your entity is doing voter registration, you're also trying to connect with the community. A part of our role is to connect with the community through voter registration and to get more people to register to vote.
The blood drive is also another way in which we try to engage with the community on ways that not only galvanizing the Columbia community, but also getting community members to join.
And then this here is the collaborative for community programs, and now.
[He clicks on the “Collaborative of Community Programs for Youth and Families” link, which opens the page]
So these are all—some of you may be members of this—but it's a large collaborative of organizations within the university that are reaching out through local schools. Right? And engaging with those local schools to help the students, whether that be through tutoring programs, whether that be through, like, GED TASC programs, so on and so forth. These departments within the university are doing outreach in the schools in community board 9, sometimes community board 12, also. So, this is a good list. If you're working with youth and you're not engaging with the people on this list, I highly recommend that you do and reach out. The more collaboration we can get, the better.
And so that pretty much sums up the GCA website and the information you can get there.
Another entity within GCA–
[He switches to another tab on his web browser, which is the Columbia Community Service website]
–is Columbia Community Service. And many of you may know Columbia Community Service as the entity in which you donate to and then our collective funds are then granted out to community organizations that need it. I think last year we gave around $280,000 to community organizations from donations from Columbia employees.
But there's also another aspect, which is connecting the resources of the university with the actual grantees.
[He clicks on the “Grantees” link, which is one of the options under the “Our Impact” menu tab. The “Grantees” page opens.]
These are the grantee organizations, and you can go through– There's categories if you want to narrow it down, but these are the grantee organizations. And if you're trying to partner with one of these organizations but you're not getting a foot in, Columbia Community Service is a great resource. Joan Griffith-Lee there is very happy to connect a department at the university that's doing work and wants to partner with a non-profit on it.
And, I think this is an often missed opportunity in that sense that people don't realize is there. If you're trying to get, let's say, alumni or staff to volunteer with these community organizations, CCS also does a great job of connecting the two, connecting you and the organizations together. And so, that is just a brief summary of what Columbia Community Service does.
[He clicks on the “Apply for a Grant” menu link, which opens the page. He then clicks on the “Columbia Community Service: Neighbors Helping Neighbors” heading, which opens the website’s homepage.]
And you can contact me or the contact information is here on the page–
[He scrolls to the bottom of the page to the footer]
–about what they're doing and how to get more involved.
[He switches to another tab on his web browser, which is the Neighbors website]
So Neighbors, which is probably which– Show of hands or if you all are comfortable using the reaction emoji system on Zoom, who here has been to the Neighbors’ site or heard of Neighbors?
I'm not doing my job because only like, okay half of you– All right. Good. [Laughs.] All right. So, some of you have visited and know what Neighbors is.
So essentially, we found out through our research is that the community doesn't care as much about departments at the university as we would like to think they do. The community sees Columbia University as a monolith. It's just Columbia University is this, and this is what Columbia University– Zuckerman may be doing amazing things, GCA may be doing amazing things. In the end, they just see this is what Columbia University is doing, and if a department at the university happens not to be doing something, again they just see it as Columbia University is not doing something right.
So, we also found that the community was a bit lost in all the websites, right? Going to the GCA website, going to CCS website, going to the variety of department websites in order to find information about what is available from the university. Right? So with that, we sat down and we thought, “What is a good approach? How should we be reaching out to the community?” And we realize having a centralized site that isn't tied to any one department is probably the best approach, and that's where Neighbors came into play.
And so Columbia Neighbors initiative to be a hub for our neighbors to come to see what events are available from Columbia and from our community partners, what resources are available from Columbia, what to do in the local community, local news. We're trying to be a resource to meet the community needs, and we know what the community wants a bit because we have analytics based on what we've done, and we see what the community responds to, and so we try to promote that.
So, just real briefly I'm going to do a quick overview of the site and what we offer, but I think if you have a community program and you're not listed in our resources directory–
[He clicks on the “Find a Resource” button, which opens the page]
–please email [email protected] immediately after this.
We created this directory to be in an easy way for community members to, let's say–
[He clicks on the “Age Groups” filter, which brings up the different age group categories]
–find programming for children–
[He clicks on the “Children” tag, which narrows down the results. He then clicks on the “Categories” filter, which brings up the different programming categories.]
–that happens to also be art.
[He clicks on the “Art & Artists” tag, which narrows down the results to only one program: Artists Reaching Out.]
And then found this, let's say, Artists Reaching Out. Right? And so we want to just make it easy for community members to find what's available.
[He clicks on the “Categories” filter, which brings up the different programming categories. He unchecks the “Art & Artists” tag, which expands the results. He then clicks on the “Age Groups” filter, which brings up the different age group categories. He clicks on the “Adults” tag, which changes the results.]
Even if we change this to adults and we change this to education–
[He clicks on the “Categories” filter, which brings up the different programming categories. He clicks on the “Education” tag, which narrows the results.]
–education programs that are available for adults in the community, right? So this was one part of the initiative.
The other part–
[He clicks on the “News” menu link, which opens the page. As he continues to talk, he scrolls down the page and runs his cursor over the different news articles.]
–is also just highlighting news in the community as varied as construction updates that are happening in and around campus, new restaurants that are opening up. We get a lot from our partners at Facilities, and we really appreciate the content partnership that we have there.
But also highlighting different programs, like the work that the Center for Justice is doing, CUIMC’s vaccine volunteer program, you know, losing members of the community, and sometimes, you know, there just aren't resources out there talking about these things. So we're also serving a need that doesn't exist—that isn't being met is what I meant to say.
And so you can see here– And we're also happy to write about your programs, right? So if you have a milestone or if you've launched something and you want to get it out into the community, we're looking for content. We're desperate for content. So we are always happy to reproduce your own content or take a look at developing new content based on what it is that you're working on.
You can also always submit stuff to us through our submission form–
[He changes the website URL to neighbors.columbia.edu/submit]
–which is here. It's taking a lovely time to load. Hopefully it doesn't take this long for you all.
[The submission form page opens]
But through our submission form, you can put your information and anything you'd like us to include, whether promoting something on social media, news stories, so on and so forth, we're happy to do it. I will say, and I just should piggyback on Victoria's comment about income levels–
Unidentified attendee:
[Indiscernible speech]
Bashar:
–we understand– Hello?
Unidentified attendee:
Kay.
Bashar:
Someone have a question? No, okay. We understand that people’s–
Unidentified attendee:
Okay, cool. Okay.
Bashar:
I think someone's unmuted.
Robert:
Please mute yourself until Bashar finishes and then we'll do question and answer.
Cassandra Nathan:
I just muted her.
Bashar:
Thanks. So, you can submit something and we'll get it out there, and we have a pretty extensive reach. We send an e-news twice a month our list—this is also showing that Neighbors is actually a product that people want in the community—our list when we launched Neighbors, which is about a year and a few months ago, was only about 1,500 members of the community, and we have over 6,000 people on our email list now that have signed up because they're interested in knowing what Columbia university has and what's available. And so we're also a resource to get the word out in that level.
And I don't want to have to go in too much detail–
[He moves his cursor to the “Manhattanville Campus” menu link, which opens the drop-down menu]
–but also for those of you that know the Manhattanville website is no longer, it's been integrated into neighbors. And I think the long-term goal here is that they'll be Morningside, Manhattanville, Uptown, Washington Heights. This will be a resource for everybody no matter where you are. If you live adjacent to the university, this is where you can come and get your information.
It doesn't mean department websites still aren't important. It's important to put that information there, but to have a one-stop shop for community members to come to is very useful. You'll notice–
[He clicks on the “Local Events” menu link, which opens the page. He then scrolls through the events.]
–even in local events, some of the stuff is not even hosted by– like, join the community board, things like that. We get it sent from the community board. “We want you to promote this.” And we get this information out there.
[He switches to another tab on his web browser, which is the Columbia University Neighbors’ Facebook page]
We also have a following through our Facebook–
[He switches to another tab on his web browser, which is the Columbia University Neighbors’ Instagram account]
–Twitter, and Instagram.
[He switches to another tab on his web browser, which is the Columbia University Neighbors’ Instagram account. He immediately switches back to the Columbia University Neighbors’ Facebook page.]
We're still growing our following, I'm not gonna lie. It's pretty low.
[He runs his cursor over the Facebook page’s number of followers, which is 1,382 people]
Some of you may have even much larger followings than what we have, but we notice that our engagement and our impressions are much higher than you think they'd be. So example, on– I think if I exit this view–
[He clicks the button “Exit View As”]
So this is our admin side. You'll see in the last 28 days, partially because we've done a little bit of advertising, which we're also happy to do for you all, is that we've reached 10,000 people in the past month. Right? So our posts are getting viewed by a lot of people. And for a page on Facebook that only has a thousand people that liked it, that's pretty big.
If you have a post, for example, on your social media and you want us to amplify your message, tag us and then we can quickly reshare that. Maggie, which is here, you know, is our social media pro, and if you haven't met Maggie, you'll get to know Maggie as you work more closely with us.
[He switches to another tab on his web browser, which is the Columbia University Neighbors’ Instagram account]
So that's our Facebook, our Twitter, and Instagram.
[He switches to another tab on his web browser, which is the Columbia University Neighbors’ Twitter account]
I don't want to go too much in detail. Acacia has also done, like, an amazing social media workshop.
But there is something I would like to discuss also with y'all is the death of the flyer. I think this has been a pain point for a lot of us, even us promoting things on Neighbors, is oftentimes there'll be an event that Columbia University departments host and there'll be a creation of a flyer. And the creation of a flyer, especially in the time of COVID-19 where the vast majority of things are digital, is very difficult to help promote what it is that you're doing.
If you think about promoting via Facebook, the information that's typically on a post—in the message of a post—the image itself is actually getting you to look at it, and the information is usually listed someplace else—on a website somewhere—and things like that. And so I think there was a history of, “We need to have something printed that we're able to give people in their hands.” While there's still a value there, we have to sort of move away from that way of doing things.
And so whatever it is that we're doing, we should be thinking about: we need an image that describes what this program is trying to accomplish, and we also need to make sure it's listed on a website that people can get information, sign up, register, so on. If you're using Eventbrite, great, but the people that are promoting it also need to be able to use your images and promote it.
And so real briefly, there are tools. Because I know a lot of you may be a part of a department that only has one– You are the communications person, and you are the outreach person, and you're holding multiple hats. But there are tools–
[He switches to another tab on his web browser, which is Adobe Spark]
–like Adobe Spark, which is a great tool that helps you create an image, and it will automatically size them for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.
[He switches to another tab on his web browser, which is Pixlr]
There's also Pixlr, which will help you size things and create things the way that you may want them.
[He switches to another tab on his web browser, which is Canva]
And a fan favorite that I don't use but many people in our department use is Canva, and to get images formatted the way you need to get them formatted to promote what it is that you want to promote.
[He switches to another tab on his web browser, which is Columbia University’s YouTube channel]
And lastly is YouTube. And I don't know if y'all have your own YouTubes, or if you've considered working with central communications on getting something out with our YouTube. But we've hosted a variety of town halls from Zoom.
Have people here done that? For example, had a Zoom with the panelists and had it streamed to Facebook or YouTube so people can watch it?
So, that's something we're happy to help you with.
Oh, we got a few people.
Sometimes, people say only 150 people saw it, but for me if 150 people watched an entire YouTube video that's an hour and a half long, I think that's quite successful considering we probably would be very happy if 50 people showed up in person and watched and participated for an hour and a half. So, we're happy to have conversations about getting content that's useful and informative to your audiences via YouTube or other platforms that we have, and we also work closely with, you know, as a part of central communication, to amplify those messages where appropriate via Columbia channels. Right?
So an example of a town hall–
[He types “gale brewer” into the search function on the YouTube channel. Results appear.]
I think if I just search for Gale Brewer. So, we did a bunch of these virtual town halls with the community around various topics, co-hosted with Manhattan borough president Gale Brewer, for example. And they were quite successful as a means to engage with our audience.
So that's just another thing to think about since we're in this digital era and we can't do in-person events because of coronavirus, of these alternative ways that don't cost much. You essentially just need a Zoom pro account, which is $25 a year from the university, and a connection to YouTube, and then also of course your outreach efforts and reaching out to the community.
And I think that just gives pretty much an overview of everything, and I want to spend the last 20 minutes sort of, like, thinking about some of the challenges that you all have faced and how we can help you think through them.
So, I'm going to stop screen sharing once I find the Zoom thing.
Where is the Zoom thing? Oh there it is.
[Zoom screen share stops]
Stop share.
Victoria:
While Bashar is looking for his Zoom share, you know, the question of, “What are some of the biggest challenges we face?” It is very much what Bashar was talking about. You know, most people see us really as, you know, this ivory tower, and 1968 didn't help. And unfortunately even for people who weren't even thought of in 1968, they still seem to want to go back to that when they're talking about Columbia in the community. I must tell you, though, that is changing. I feel it changing with the people that I live around who are feeling less and less like we, you know, we don't care or we're only out for ourselves. So I think that that was a question that came up.
And, you know, the biggest challenges I find are linguistic, you know, the linguistic challenge; the monetary challenge because, you know, we can't afford to support every, you know, community organization or initiative, but we give it our best shot.
So now I think we're about to start taking questions. Robert?
Robert:
Yeah, so we have a couple of questions in the chat already. Cassandra's going to lead us off with that, and if people have other questions, please put them in the chat and we'll address those as we move along. Cassandra?
Cassandra:
Hi, guys. So, before we begin, I noticed that there are probably about 15 people who included their name and their title. So, if you joined us a little late, please be sure to include your name, your title, school, department, institute. I'll copy and paste that in the chat below. We just want to be mindful of who's here with us today.
So, thank you, Bashar and Victoria, for your wonderful presentation. So, one of the questions that came up outside of the biggest challenges are, “What are examples of schools or departments that have active programs with the local community?”
Victoria:
Oh my god. Well, Community Impact is huge. I don't know if you all know this, but their high school diploma—you know, we call them GEDs, they call them something else now, TASC— is one of the best in the state. They created a program in the summertime that had– They were able to graduate, you know, over 200 community residents, and it's quite popular.
The other school that does a lot with community is Engineering. Engineering has a very active community engagement department and programs that they're involved with. I would say also Teachers College is amazing, especially around early childhood and messages of that sort.
And who else? School of social work. School of Social Work has a multitude of programs that they have, you know, that they work with community-based organizations, or they work on issues of justice or mental health, things of that kind. And the Medical Center also has quite a few programs and community-based clinics and special programs for diabetes and high blood pressure and stuff, you know, and things that are medical related.
Did I answer your question?
Cassandra:
You did, absolutely. In abundance. I'm grateful for that.
By the way, you guys, if you have questions, feel free to chime in. You're more than welcome to interact directly with Victoria and Bashar. I'm just helping to field the questions along, but they're here for you guys. So, can you talk about the difference between creating awareness and meaningful community engagement?
Bashar:
I think that's why we still have an Office of Government and Community Affairs, right? So, there's a lot of that interpersonal stuff that takes place, attending community board meetings being– Which by the way, if you haven't spoken at a community board meeting, like community board nine, or you haven't tried to do that, our office—the government team and our office—is happy to try to make those connections, and has literally hand-held people to have those conversations.
I think it's a matter of also looking at, like, the Columbia Community Service grantees, and it's a difference of putting on science programming, for example, for youth and just getting the word out, and then actually going into the schools or going with the non-profits that are in community board nine and saying, “Hey, we're doing this program. Do you want to collaborate, and do you wanna work on this with us?” I think the most successful programs are when there's a collaboration. You know, if the end goal is to provide science education, for example, to youth, then working with as many people to reach the target audience is quite important.
So, I think thinking through those things is important, and then actually getting the message to your audiences, to Robert's point. Getting a flyer and just putting it on your social media probably isn't the best approach, but if you're paying for an ad and maybe targeting it towards your target demographics on those social media platforms, or getting us on Neighbors to push it via our our twice monthly e-news or via one of our other platforms, is another way just meeting your audiences where they are. And I will say, community-based organizations have been doing this for a while, and they have a list of people that we don't have access to, and so I think they're going to be your best partners in reaching the community.
Cassandra:
If someone's, like, new in communications, to your point, what would you recommend? Like, what steps would you recommend that they take to identify the best way to attract their audience or get information to their audience?
Bashar:
So, I think to Victoria's part of her presentation showing those demographics, some of you may already know that. But also, if your audience is pretty specific and you're not sure how to reach them, I think having a conversation with us or having a conversation with some of those community organizations that are reaching those audiences is a start. But, you know, there are audiences that we're still not reaching with Neighbors, which requires us to still do, like, print advertising or more traditional ways of reaching out to those community members. And certain people, say that attend community board meetings, that aren't interested in getting on email lists or doing social media, being a part of those meetings, and those settings.
And Victoria, you can add to that.
Victoria:
No, I wanted to apologize because I also wanted to mention that in Manhattanville, we are doing a active community engagement through the forum and through the– We work with the Zuckerman Institute and we do a community day once a semester where we, you know, we have all these activities for young children in the community like scientific, you know, brain exercises and stuff, and I know that the forum is also doing quite a robust community engagement program. So, I forgot to mention them, so I wanted to be sure that I gave them a shout out.
Bashar:
Yeah.
Cassandra:
Also, some of the feedback that I received in general, we have some newcomers to Columbia University and some people that might have transitioned in their role, and so there's a little bit of, how do we say, a lot of nuances, especially with COVID. How do you, if at all, would you recommend someone gauge success now with what they're doing communications-wise? So, say for example, somebody wants to be able to present, you know, to their superior, to their boss, or something like that. How do you guys gauge success, say with your website, or are people reading these newsletters, etc. amidst this pandemic?
Bashar:
So I'll talk a little bit about technology, and then if folks have more specific questions, I can talk about that. So, we rate success based off of participation. We rate success based off of our analytics about who's visiting our website, and how many people are visiting our website, and what pages they're going to. We analyze that and, for example, if an event is very popular on our website, we tend to see this apparently is what our audience is looking for. At the same time, if an event is not popular but is a focus area that we should be working on, I think that tells us where we need to focus more energy or reevaluate our efforts.
Another resource is Columbia sites, right? So if you all have a website, if you have a Columbia Site site, I highly suggest working with that team. If you're not familiar with analytics, they do have training programs and will guide you through that.
But we also rely on feedback from our community partners. So, if a community partner says, “Thank you so much for promoting this, I heard from a lot of people that they found out through you,” we've gotten that too, but we just collect all that information.
But analytics is probably the most useful. And email clicks, we can see which, for example, events or news articles people are clicking on the most when we send our e-blasts out, so we can think about what the community—what our list—is interested in. And I rely also on, for example, Phoebe and Flores and the community relations team to tell us what they think the community is interested, and maybe it is that our list isn't reflective of the community that we should have, so we should focus on outreach to get more people to sign up for our email blast, for example.
So, it's a back and forth. There is no, like, one place to get all those analytics, and some people think it's a science. I haven't mastered that science, so I think it's more of a qualitative thing for me.
Cassandra:
So I noticed that Jessica has a question, so Jessica, I'll pass the floor to you.
Jessica Reyes:
Hi everyone, I'm Jessica Reyes. I actually work very closely with Victoria Benitez and Bashar. You've probably seen my name in many emails. But I just wanted to further bring some attention to you guys, and Bashar, I have this question for you. Maybe some people don't necessarily know who to contact in GCA, so who would be the best contact to begin that process?
Bashar:
So, if you are trying to get in contact with elected officials and get that relationship, Loftin Flowers is probably the best person to contact. If you're trying to reach out to community boards, Tricia Shimamura is the best person to contact. If you're trying to reach out to community organizations, Phoebe and Victoria are great people to reach out to. If you're trying to reach out to youth-serving organizations, Henry Danner, which runs the Connecting Youth Initiative. And I'll also say not GCA, but Kecia Hayes at Double Discovery is an amazing person to engage with around youth programming and is super collaborative.
And then if you're trying to just communicate to your audience, if you tell us who your audience is you know how to communicate, we can use Neighbors as a platform and you can just contact [email protected], which gets me, Jessica, and Maggie. And we will figure out a plan to get via our platform's word out about your program or event. And if you're trying to do something more of a larger scale, also email me or the Neighbors email and talk about what it is that you're trying to accomplish, and we can figure out whether we have the resources to help you accomplish what you're trying to accomplish.
And then Odelia just sent a message about– Did I answer that, Jess?
Jessica:
Yeah, that was great. There's also a question prior, before you get to Odelia. Holly wants to know if there's any, like, connections or contact with PR people at government agencies like NSF or DOE, and she prefers to connect with.
Bashar:
I was going to– I think Holly hopped off, but I'm going to email her, she– Oh there you are. Okay. Yeah, I would say Loftin would be the best person to talk to, but then also depending on what it is he– there may be someone at, like, CUIMC GCA to talk to.
I can't hear you, Holly.
Holly Evarts:
CYM what?
Bashar:
The Medical Center's GCA.
Holly:
Oh, oh, oh, oh, okay. Yeah.
Bashar:
Loftin would be the first person to reach out to, and you're also welcome to CC me and just say, you know, “At this meeting, Bashar recommended I reach out to you.”
Holly:
The reason I asked is I've been CC'd on a couple of emails from the DOE to him, and that's all news, which I think is great because they're pulling us in more, so I want to be able to reach back out to them. So I'll check in with them. Great. Thank–
Bashar:
Yeah, Loftin's great in that aspect.
Holly:
Super, thanks.
Bashar:
And Spanish. Victoria, I'll need your help with this, but I'll just say what Neighbors does, and then we can go. So, we only have one communications product that's in Spanish, and that is—which I didn't really go over, but it's included in our Neighbors e-news—it’s called the Neighbors Bulletin, and if you go on the Neighbors’ website and you scroll down, you'll find a description of the bulletin. But we include that in the e-news, and it's in English and Spanish. And we do promote via our social in Spanish, and we do submit this bulletin.
So, we find with the bulletin, what people are doing is English-speaking individuals of organizations that have Spanish-speaking clients will take that bulletin and forward it or a community board will put it in its Spanish resources, and so we found that to be very useful.
But the reality is a Spanish-speaking person, while they may like our Facebook page, if they don't speak English, they're probably less likely to like our Facebook page, our Twitter, our Instagram, even visit our website on a regular basis because it's not in Spanish. And even if we translated our website entirely into Spanish, some of the resources will be helpful.
But, I think if you're truly interested in providing programming and reaching Spanish-speaking communities, you're gonna want to make sure that that person can go to a website that's completely in Spanish, that that person can get information, that person can ask questions in Spanish to the person that's running the event, and also if they end up, for example, attending the event, that somebody there will be able to– You know, we translate the bulletin into Spanish, but not all the programming is in Spanish. So if they see the bulletin, go to the event and the entire event in English, they're going to be discouraged, and their relationship with Columbia is going to be challenged.
And Victoria, you’d know better about this.
Victoria:
Yeah. I have connections to, like, translation services, like you know, that would do simultaneous translations during a Zoom meeting, which is really quite easy. But what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to promote it to a Spanish-speaking audience and then they'll sign on. But you know, you can't promote an event in just English and then have a translation because nobody who speaks Spanish would have signed up for it. So what I would suggest is if you do have events or things or even news that you want to get out to people in Spanish, you know, reach out to me and I'll put you in touch with a translation service that I think is really quite good and has a variety of different things they can do for you.
Any last questions?
Well, in closing, thank you guys for taking the time to meet with us today. I hope you've been somewhat informed about what we do. And I also want to say, I just looked at Christina Gray. I also love student veterans. Okay? And this [indiscernible] in General Studies is amazing
Christina Gray:
Yes, I'll have to reconnect with you on some veterans.
Victoria:
Please do, please do. But again, everyone, thank you so much for taking the time.
Robert:
Thank you, Victoria. Thank you, Bashar, Cassandra, and all the other partners and people that attended. We're gonna wind down. Our next session is next Tuesday at 2 p.m, and we hope to see you then. Thanks so much, everyone. Have a good day.
Victoria:
Bye, guys.