Best of CASE District VIII Award
 

Institution: Central Oregon Community College

Title of entry: Legacies Magazine

About this entry: Legacies Magazine is the annual print publication of the Central Oregon Community College (COCC) Foundation published each fall. During the initial phases of the Covid-related shutdown, we realized we need to change our tack for the magazine, and built the Fall 2020 issue around the critical needs our students at COCC were facing. We also recognized the sensitivity of using photographs which at the time didn't support best practices in health and wellness, namely, photos of subjects wearing masks and appropriately distancing. We brought our advancement team together and agreed we would use a graphical image for the front cover, and thread that through the feature story in the piece itself. Further, after several years of discussion, this creative and outside the box thinking led us to add in a six-page "Impact of Giving Report" to the end of the publication. The overarching rationale was to be efficient, effective, and share the true impact of philanthropy with our readers with a new design and data-driven format, directly after they'd seen other high-quality stories about programs, student success, community engagement and more. The impact was immediate and far-reaching: donations as a result of our feature on the student emergency fund immediately poured in and surpassed our goal by over $35K. This issue also went on to receive the National Council for Marketing & Public Relations District 7 Silver Award in the magazine category, and lead writer, Mark Johnson won bronze for Excellence in Writing in the same category.