KayleyWhalen

The Challenge: Uplifting Marginalized Autistic Voices

The Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network (AWN) brought me on as a digital communications consultant from Jan 2021 to December 2022 to help them uplift issues facing autistic BIPoC and autistic LGBTQIAP+ people. Initial goals were promoting the release for their book Sincerely, Your Autistic Child and boosting registrations for their monthly #LiberatingWebinars series. They also had aggressive fundraising goals for April, Autism Acceptance Month. Their email newsletter, Instagram and Twitter were largely dormant, and they had no communications or development strategy in place to engage with past supporters and bring in new donors.

The Process: Developing a Long-Term Content Strategy

Created a content calendar to plan 6 months ahead with organizational priorities and digital media “hooks” for dates relevant to the community (i.e. Autism Acceptance Day, International Women’s Day).
Vetted and selected a new Constituent Relationship Management System(CRM) to centralize all of AWN’s data, fundraising, and email communications into one system, and used that system (Neon) to track email analytics, segment email and donor lists, and refine messaging to improve click through rates.
Relaunched their email newsletter to push people to register for upcoming Liberating Webinars, build excitement for the book launch, and celebrate important dates.
Managed art director to create compelling graphics for key dates that were adapted for their Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter feeds, as well as Facebook/Instagram Stories."
Collaborated with Beacon Press to create and share “Sincerely, Your Autistic Child” digital media content for book pre-sales and the book launch on March 30, 2021.
Leveraged autistic/disabled social media influencers to promote the #LiberatingWebinars series, and live-tweeted each webinar to build community engagement.

The Results: Successful Book Launch, Increased Donations and Event Registrations

Over 2,100 people attended the Liberating Webinars series between January and June 2021.
Sincerely Your Autistic Child exceeded initial sales goals with over 12,000 hard copies shipped and 2,700 ebook+audiobook sales. Bookshop.org sold out of its initial stock of books the day of the book release.
Fundraising for April 2021 (Autism Acceptance Month) exceeded April 2020 fundraising by 26%, and we had over a dozen supporters host individual fundraisers to support us.
918,000 impressions on Twitter during the five weeks promoting the book launch (March 30) and Autism Acceptance Month (April).
We built on this success in 2021 to continue to drive online engagement and fundraising in 2022.
In Fall 2022 supported organization in re-launching website and rebranding/revising organizational resources including their AWN Welcome Packets.

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Kayley Whalen has greatly helped our organization with a communication's strategy that uplifted our presence in the communities we serve. Her leadership has helped make our email, web, and social media to better communicate our mission and goals with a combination of professionalism and down-to-earth realism which easily translates to our closely held values. She ensured the launch of our book, "Sincerely, Your Autistic Child" exceeded sales goals , and she boosted our programming goals which brought in thousands of attendees to our Liberating Webinars series. Kayley is mindful of industry trends and uses analytics to drive marketing strategy, and she has been a pivotal addition to our team as we prepare for the re-launch of our website.

Sharon Davanport

Executive Director, Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network