Case Study: Friends of Panthertown

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1 Case Study: Friends of Panthertown Research: Friends of Panthertown is a 501(c) nonprofit that works to preserve Panthertown Valley. They are mostly funded by donations from volunteers and memberships as well as grants from the National Forest Service. Due to budget cuts, Friends of Panthertown heavily relies on volunteers to maintain 30 miles of trails. The main problem Friends of Panthertown faces is getting a consistent flow of volunteers to maintain the trails. Our group saw the opportunity to engage the WCU community to create partnerships with Friends of Panthertown. The biggest challenge that our group faced was soliciting people from WCU and the surrounding community to volunteer for trail days. Action: The unique solution that our group enacted for Friends of Panthertown was to encourage clubs and organizations that are concerned with environmental conservation to visit Panthertown Valley and volunteer. Our group connected with groups such as; Base Camp Cullowhee, Parks and Recreation Management, Environmental Health and Science Club, Biology Club, and the Eco Cats to make partnerships and connections and raise awareness of the challenge to obtain volunteers for Friends of Panthertown. Our main focus was to establish and ongoing partnership to provide Friends of Panthertown a consistent flow of volunteers. By creating lasting connections and fostering a good relationship between the WCU community and Friends of Panthertown, students, faculty, and staff will continue to come to the Panthertown Valley and volunteer with Friends of Panthertown. Communication: Though we fell short in accomplishing all of our goals and objectives for our campaign, we were able to accomplish most of our goals and objectives throughout our campaign and establish a considerable amount of groundwork so that our client can further the campaign after this semester. Send out survey for research Arrange internship with Parks and Recreation Department and Base Camp Cullowhee Established a base communication to build partnerships with: Base Camp Cullowhee Service Learning Center

2 Biology Club Parks and Recreation Department Environmental Science Department Create two trail maintenance days March 28 April 22 Promote trail maintenance days Distribute flyers flyers Social media posts Press releases Evaluation: Overall we created two flyers and one press release throughout our campaign. For our flyers, we used a basic format with tear off information available. The main objective for the flyer was for the color and format to be bold, basic, and bright. We chose bright neon green to grab the attention of those passing by, and the Need Volunteer Hours? title to market toward those involved in clubs/greek life/athletics who need volunteer hours to graduate. The tear off tabs at the bottom make it easier for people on the go to get the information and look at it later without needing the entire document. The flyers were placed around Western Carolina University s campus; the target audience were the students/faculty/ staff of the university. For our press release, we sent out information on our event for Earth Day, March 22. We used information from our client s Facebook event post, and added information about Panthertown Valley. The press release was sent out to the Asheville Citizen Times, the Sylva Herald, the Western Carolinian, the Crossroad Chronicle, outdoors@mountainx.com, Smoky Mountain News, and WRGC.

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