Our organization, the Early Childhood Educators of Reformed Judaism (ECE-RJ), has been around for 15 years. I’ve been its executive director for four years.
I’ve seen the organization grow and, at times, struggle – but our mission of meeting the needs of our membership, by delivering professional resources, support and education, has never wavered.
Our ECE-RJ leadership knew it was time to look outside the organization for help in achieving our growth and communication goals. We needed someone who could understand and respect our mission and valued audiences, while helping us to change, grow and deliver even more value.
We met with Andy Brenits of Brenits Creative and were excited about the opportunity to build on our existing brand. The ECE-RJ quickly saw that Andy understood where we were starting from, had ideas on how to grow our membership and knew how we could better demonstrate our value. This was the outsider’s perspectives we’d been looking for.
We partnered with the Brenits Creative team and started with an intensive brand workshop. Andy encouraged us to get input from some of our members and board members, and their connection to the process became invaluable in helping shape a new brand strategy.
We heard first-hand what members thought ECE-RJ did well and what additional support they needed. This input helped keep us focused on high-priority, high-value work. We better understood what resonated with our diverse audiences of teachers, Jewish leadership and their congregations and how to communicate and market more effectively to them.
Our team and Brenits’ developed a tagline – Uplift, Inspire, Unite – that’s now part of our messaging. We’re communicating in new ways and using a better voice, tone and approach as we go forward.
Our work also included tackling our websites and our publication, the Unite newsletter, which helps keep our organization top of mind with members. After key improvements and enhancements, we’re continuing to send Unite and feel even more confident it’s representative of our new brand and offers something for our diverse audiences.
We continue to receive feedback from ECE-RJ membership and Jewish leadership on our new messaging and more professional marketing. We’re growing our membership, too.
Working with Andy and his team, we just completed a compensation and benefits survey. We’re excited to be able to present this information to our members and the public.
Our organization, with nearly 1,000 members today, is now better positioned for the future, thanks to our partnership with the Brenits Creative team.
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