Ideaworks grant will help nonprofit group assist crisis victims
Ideaworks grant will help nonprofit group assist crisis victims
A volunteer group which helps crisis victims will get a year’s worth of free marketing and public relations help from a Pensacola marketing agency to expand its services.
Trauma Intervention Program of Northwest Florida was awarded the 2013 “Goodworks” grant from Ideaworks Inc., which will provide in-depth support—strategy, public relations, graphics, interactive marketing and social media. Ideaworks, now 17 years old, picks one nonprofit per year to help with total marketing support.
TIP, which serves Escambia, Santa Rosa and Okaloosa counties, is a volunteer group. Its trained volunteers answer calls from emergency responders who need additional support for victims or survivors of traumatic events. TIP’s mission is to provide immediate on-scene support – night or day — to help survivors of tragedy to deal with their pain and begin to recover; TIP volunteers respond to hundreds of calls each year.
Ideaworks’ mission will be to expand awareness of the TIP program, not only to the general public but to people who want to become volunteers and to police officers, firefighters and paramedics who may not know about the organization.
“Police, firefighters and other emergency responders often don’t have the time to slow down and comfort family members reeling from a loss,” said Tommy Carter, the group’s director. “TIP exists to provide that extra care.”
This year Ideaworks selected its Goodworks recipient from a shortlist of non-profit organizations that had been grant finalists at least two times in previous years.
“Reviewing applications from the past several years, we found that a handful of organizations had made it to our top three several times,” said Ideaworks president Caron Sjoberg. “So rather than holding a new competition for 2013, which can be time-consuming for applicants, we reconsidered applications from organizations which had tried in the past to win a Goodworks grant and had been ranked in the top three applications.”
Ideaworks has received hundreds of applications for Goodworks support in the past eight years; it chose TIP from a list of groups that had finished high in the rankings in multiple previous applications. Rather than holding a new competition for 2013, which can be time-consuming for applicants, Ideaworks reconsidered applications from organizations which had tried in the past to win a Goodworks grant and had been ranked in the top three applications.
Past grant recipients include Friends of the Public Library, Seastars Acquatics, Pyramid Inc., The Zoo Northwest Florida, EscaRosa Coalition on the Homeless, Bay Area Food Bank Backpack for Kids Program, Perdido Bay Tribe Southeastern Lower Muscogee Creek Indians, and the Community Drug and Alcohol Council (CDAC).
