United Ways of California partnered with Sterling Communications to announce the initial rollout of its new Enhanced Care Digital Referral Network (ECDRN) across 11 pioneering United Ways serving 20 California counties. This new technology framework enables the exchange of data more smoothly and efficiently across community-based organizations (CBOs). The ECDRN enables CBOs, case managers, and employees to more easily confirm service referrals and delivery and solve for particular case management outcomes and data analytics use cases.
Sterling took the initial internal project brief and distilled it to a standard press release length, incorporating key messages addressing who, what, where, when, how, and, especially, why. Sterling also polished the internal FAQ document.
Because each United Way office can serve multiple counties, Sterling identified the top media outlets in each major town covered by the initial 11 participating United Ways, coordinating with the internal public relations manager to avoid overlapping outreach to media targets. Without video to illustrate what was essentially an IT story, Sterling focused effort on local print media, particularly outlets offering the chance of syndication.
The press release secured 841 views on the wire service within the first 48 hours, from 103 online postings. Sterling was able to initiate media outreach after the press release was on the wire and immediately secured an interview request from the leading daily newspaper in Butte County as well as interest from independent weeklies in Monterey County. A long feature article in the Chico Enterprise Record, “United Way embarks on software upgrades to service referrals,” was syndicated across five local dailies as well as MSN, while the editor of the NonProfit Times replied that he “loved” the announcement.