COMMUNICATION REQUEST

Invest STL is seeking a full-service public interest communications firm to provide ongoing support for several multi-tactic strategic communications efforts in the spring and summer of 2022. These campaigns will span a broad range of funding areas, grantees, audiences, and goals, with some thematic intersections.

We are looking for an agency that can provide creative thinking and operational support to meet our strategic objectives. We expect this branding and communication strategy will help us:

• Update our branding + identity
• Develop a plan to introduce/reintroduce ourselves to the St. Louis community and state and national audiences
• Align our reintroduction with launching our next fundraising campaign and the campaign cycle
• Ensure there is an actionable communications strategy, across all appropriate channels, we can implement as we embark on a major fundraising campaign 
• Engage with priority audiences in an authentic and meaningful manner to learn about, understand, and adopt our People + Power + Place + System framework
• Gain recognition as a thought leader whose insight and innovations are directly tied to people in neighborhoods, our beloved community

SCOPE OF WORK

Invest STL sees the communication work as a result of growing a strong relationship with the selected communication firm. While we have several communication priorities and goals that are time bound, we need to develop the communication strategy, messaging, and capacity to:

1. Have a strong brand, including messaging about our work and values.
2. Understand our priority audiences in order to engage them and build a stronger relationship. These audiences include:

• Neighborhood residents in majority Black neighborhoods throughout the City of St. Louis and St. Louis County. 
• Residents in the Dutchtown and West End neighborhoods, along with other target neighborhoods as we expand our reach. (Who might we be engaging with as we expand our partnerships?)
• Neighborhood Leaders, Block Unit Captains, Community Organizers, Activists, Artists (Who are specific examples from these neighborhoods?) 
• Community Developers, Small Business Owners, Community Development Corporations, Neighborhood Associations, other Community and Economic Development Stakeholders, Cornerstone Community Development Corporation, Dutchtown South Community Corporation, Tabernacle Community Development Corporation, Community Builders Network (What are other specific examples from these neighborhoods?)
• Banks, Foundations, other Funding Institutions (in St. Louis, Missouri, and the Midwest)
• Local Government, Office of St. Louis City Mayor Tishaura Jones, St. Louis Development Corporation, Community Development Administration.
• State and Federal Government (as applicable).
  3. Align the communications around our branding and values and ensure we are collecting and sharing stories from the community that reflect the transformations taking root. 4. Develop a communication strategy that allows Invest STL staff to authentically engage priority audiences through the most appropriate channels (e.g., news media, social media, website, events). This communication plan will inform and support Invest STL's 2022 initiatives and develop the capacity to shift larger narratives locally, regionally, and nationally about community development, St. Louis neighborhoods, and the change required to ensure every St. Louis neighborhood is a chosen place to live, raise children, and grow old.

COMMUNICATION CONTEXT

Invest STL is entering an exciting growth period for our organization. We are growing as a team, including having recently hired our first narrative + communications coordinator and policy design activation partner. While we have some recognition in the St. Louis community and community development ecosystem, we see 2022 as critical for our growth, evolution, and success. Additional communication concerns to consider:

• Our organization is not well defined in this sector, and people don't fully know what we do or understand the value we cultivate with our partners. While community development implies physical space, our philosophy is framed around people + power + place + system, and we want our audience(s) to understand and adopt this framework. This is a learning opportunity for our priority audiences. Invest STL will be communicating a new vision for the community/economic development ecosystem - one that everyone can see themselves in, buy into, participate in, feel a sense of belonging to, and have an ability to move with agency.
• We communicate with very different audiences - Black communities, grassroots leaders, bankers, funders, and other community actors and thought leaders. We want to understand what these specific audiences want from us, and we want them to see our value and understand our roles together. We need to build trust between the funders and the investees, inspiring each to truly value the other's contribution. This is a new way of doing work, and we need to communicate and demonstrate it in our communications.
• St. Louis has unlimited potential, there is an abundance of resources, and our people are our biggest asset, yet racism holds this potential back. The current narratives about St. Louis, specific neighborhoods, and particular people are harmful and represent a repressive world view. We can support this narrative change through our work with partners on the ground, in communities, across organizations and companies, as a critical voice lifting up the visions and efforts of St. Louis residents, along with our own values and approach as a thought leader in St. Louis and across the country.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

Invest STL is looking for a Communications, Branding, PR, Marketing Firm that understands the ethos of our strategic aim to incorporate community voice into every part of our process and can leverage that value towards multiple and remarkable ends. Since we are working with community organizations, neighborhoods, institutions, and government, our communications should allow the community to see themselves reflected within our collective work and storytelling.

BACKGROUND 

Invest STL began as a grassroots effort of resident leaders, academics, bankers, and community development professionals who came together to increase financial support for place-based investment in our region. With the belief that everyone can champion the building of thriving neighborhoods in St. Louis, they began to crowdsource funding in local bars and making micro-grants.

In 2014 and 2015, a group of philanthropic, community development, and other community stakeholders worked together as the Strengthening St. Louis Neighborhoods Task Force to develop a proposal for building a stronger regional community economic development system that better leverages the region's assets to support neighborhoods. Their research and the resulting recommendations in their 2014 report, Building a St. Louis Regional Community Development System, reinforced the need for Invest STL to not only fund community development, but also coordinate the regional development systems. 

This insight helped guide Invest STL's evolving approach to community development, broadening our organization's outlook to look beyond systems-level actors and step into deep authentic relationships with residents in neighborhoods as a means to cultivate greater insight, wisdom, and vision from those whose valuable experience and knowledge is often overlooked or glossed over in community development collective planning. This outlook required a shift in how we relate to power and how power operates within our organization and our work with our partners. Using the framework of People + Power + Place + Systems, we became more intentional and transparent in calling out the historical and present day context of systemic anti-Black racism that stifles and harms our collective effort to build a thriving St. Louis for all.

Today, Invest STL is entering a phase of growth and transformation, continuing to support greater funding, partnership, and innovation throughout the community development ecosystem as we scale up our operations and deepen and broaden our support of resident-centered neighborhood development. Invest STL moves with flexibility and responsiveness, catalyzing sustained, resident-powered neighborhood transformation. Invest STL is led by its Executive Director and staff with guidance from its own leadership board.

In the coming year, Invest STL is aiming to become a local, regional, and national leader in community-centered equitable development that invests in the power of people and their neighborhoods to develop communities of justice and opportunity in places that continue to endure the legacy of systemic anti-Black racism. We plan to do this through these four main actions:

• Neighborhood Solidarity Fund - Multi-year investments and partnerships made directly in neighborhoods working with Black and brown owners of small businesses, community development corporations, community organizers, activists, artists, healthcare providers.

• Community and Economic Development System Investing - Broader, regionally focused investments of thought partnership and funding that yield powerful, supported, chosen neighborhoods. (Subject for the change IS the system)

• Big Ideas Piloting + Policy/Practice Design - Moving policy and practice hunches to rapid prototyping and evaluation through public and/or private funding aggregation, with ultimate intent for local, state, and federal (as applicable) government adoption.

• Narrative Reframing - Shift how our region and its decision-makers and influencers think about, speak of, and frame challenges and opportunities for our landscape of neighborhoods and the people within them.

For more information about Invest STL, please refer to these resources: Invest STL, Reflections On 2020, andSmall Business LIFT Spotlights.

TIMEFRAME AND ESTIMATED BUDGET

PHASE 1: Develop Invest STL brand guide and communication strategy (audiences and messaging) with support for and capacity building for Invest STL Narrative + Communications Coordinator, Michael Pagano.

January 2022 - March 2022

PHASE 2: Create and support the execution of communications strategy to reintroduce Invest STL to specific audiences (community, state and national audiences within community and economic development spaces) 

March 2022 - September 2022

PHASE 3: Launch communications strategy to support our 2022 fundraising campaign in the St. Louis region to specific audiences. 

May 2022 - August 2022

Proposals should not exceed $80,000 in projected costs/scope.

PROPOSAL DUE DATE: WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2021 - NO LATER THAN 5PM CST

EVALUATION CRITERIA

The following evaluation criteria will be used to determine the most highly qualified firm(s). 

Recommended Approach & Deliverables 25 pts.

Expertise/experience 15 pts.

Project Staffing 15 pts.

Case studies 15 pts.

Testimonials/References 15 pts.

Budget & Timeline 15 pts.

Total 100 pts.