5 Inclusive Marketing Moves a Small Perth Charity Could Make Tomorrow
Most digital marketing advice assumes a fairly narrow audience: someone who's online, comfortable in English, and already familiar with the platforms you're using. That leaves a lot of people out. Roughly one in five older Australians live with social isolation, and for culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) seniors, language and distance from family can make it worse.
AfCAS (Association for Culturally Appropriate Services) is a small Perth charity that supports CALD seniors through a Volunteer Visitor Scheme, pairing bilingual volunteers with isolated seniors for a couple of hours a month. Like many small, volunteer-run charities, most of what AfCAS posts online is straightforward: workshop notices, service information, event details, which is completely reasonable without a dedicated marketing team. But it also means a genuinely compelling program like this one can get lost in the same tone as everything else.
Lead with a specific person, not the program name. A post titled "Volunteer Visitor Scheme" competes with every other cause asking for volunteers. A post that opens with a senior who has no one left to speak her language with does not.
Say why it matters, in terms anyone can feel. Explaining what a service does isn't the same as explaining why it matters. Isolation, family, and being understood are ideas that translate across cultures, unlike cultural competency training and audits, which are harder for a general audience to feel.
Ask for something small and specific. "Get involved" asks nothing specific of anyone. "Give two hours a month" is a decision someone can make on the spot. The smaller and more concrete the ask, the more likely people act on it.
Lean on trust other groups already have. A charity this small will always be outreached by the community groups, cultural associations, and aged-care providers its audience already trusts. One shared post from a trusted partner can do more than a dozen posts from its own page.
Let one story replace a paragraph of facts. One sentence about a volunteer and the person she visits does more work than a paragraph describing the program, and it's the kind of content people actually share.
None of this needs a marketing budget AfCAS doesn't have. It needs one clear story told to one specific person, instead of an announcement written for everyone in general.
See the Volunteer Visitor Scheme at www.afcas.net.
By 10705406
(Disclaimer: This content is for the sole purpose of teaching and learning at Edith Cowan University.)
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