Sweet Cheeks Diaper Bank

OBJECTIVES

Create a compelling brand that linked her goal with the local community.
Make working with us quick and easy.
Create and maintain a strong local and online presence to empower local businesses and volunteers to commit to our cause.

In mid-2015, Megan Fischer reached out to me with an idea she couldn’t get out of her head. She just learned that Cincinnati, Ohio, the city we both grew up, in was ranked as having the second highest poverty rate in Ohio. Thinking of her children, she learned a basic need for babies, diapers, was not covered under WIC, food stamps or any social program. Without having a diaper bank in the community, this left low income families with a difficult decision. Pay the bills or diaper their child. This simply broke her heart.

After being inspired by her local church, she decided to start thinking of ways to help. At this point she reached out to me with an idea that would change our community forever.

I want to start a diaper bank and I would like your help…

Starting from the beginning, I worked with Megan by first getting an understanding of what she wanted to accomplish. Her goal was to solve diaper need in the greater Cincinnati area. We knew right away that this is a HUGE problem and one that would not easily be solved. After going back and forth between ideas and potential solutions, I uncovered the main objectives on the path to solving her goal.

Create a compelling brand that created a link between the local community and Sweet Cheeks Diaper Bank

Solution: Harness Cincinnati’s love for flying pigs to create the connection between the non-profit and the local community.

I experimented with a few ideas before settling on the logo. The Cincinnati skyline wasn’t immediately recognizable and the next most well known “Cincinnati” thing was it’s famous chocolate based, spaghetti covered, cheddar cheese topped chili. While these ideas were very “Cincinnati”, they didn’t create the tie between us and the city that we were looking for. Finally after a furious brainstorm session, the birth of Morty, the loveable diaper wearing flying pig was born.

Cincinnati and pigs have a unique historical significance rooted in the prevalent pork industry associated with our fair city. Once nicknamed ‘Porkopolis’ the city now hosts events such as the BigPig Gig and the Flying Pig Marathon. Public art around town also features painted flying pig statues. This link (sausage anyone?) tied our brand to the community we were trying to service. The brand was immediately iconic to the city while being unique in its own way.

Make working with us quick and easy

SOLUTION: Help social service agencies avoid tedious paperwork by creating a secure web portal to sign-up children in need.

Being easy to work with is easy to say, but the examples of how other diaper banks operated were essentially a lot of paperwork to get every child signed up. This may be easy but it is never fun.

Being the friend of a web developer has its perks so Megan was more than happy to let me take the lead here. I wanted to create a website that Sweet Cheeks Diaper Bank could work with without having to learn any code. I decided a WordPress site would be ideal. Being database-driven allowed us to register social service agencies as users. Next, I created a registration page allowing them to sign up children through a password-protected portal. This was very well received by social service agencies that were accustomed to being bogged down by tedious paperwork. Not only was this new method easy for social service agencies to use but it gave Sweet Cheeks Diaper Bank a safe, secure, and accurate database of everyone that signed up. This data is used to quickly quantify the number of children they are helping while also giving them the information needed to apply for donations and grants to secure future funding.

Create an maintain a strong local and online presence to empower businesses, community leaders and volunteers to commit to our cause.

Solution: Use blog posts, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to promote the Sweet Cheeks Diaper Bank brand while informing our local community of events, diaper drives and basic diaper need information.

Of course anyone can post on social media these days but maintaining a presence online without bugging or annoying our community was key. Posting on various social media platforms informed and motivated Sweet Cheeks followers to signup to host diaper drives, participate in fundraising events, and volunteer to help with the laborious process that serving a community can bring. We created a monthly schedule identifying topics, events, and information that was clear and concise without taking up too much of our audience’s time. Writing then posting blog posts on social media also drove traffic to our website while boosting our search engine optimization. Working with other local businesses and organizations, we created cross-promotional strategies that are featured on both our blog, social media and our partners websites.