02 Dec How to Pull Off a Major Mobile Initiative

By Dana Marlowe

In late 2019, I Support the Girls (ISTG) held our first International Affiliate Retreat. We have 58 global Affiliate Directors (volunteers) who run chapters of ISTG in their cities. This was the first time in four years that these volunteers met ISTG staff—and each other—in person.

It was a magical weekend filled with learning, brainstorming and lots of laughs and hugs. As soon as it ended, we couldn’t wait to start planning the next retreat. Then five months later, the entire world changed. Meeting in person in 2020 was no longer an option.

Fast forward to 2021. Vaccinations and a #Vangina gifted to us by Amazon meant that we could meet with our Affiliates again IRL. The 2021 Vangina Tour was born with a goal of spending time with our Affiliate Directors and donating half a million products across the U.S. while raising awareness along the way.

We’ve successfully visited 22 cities over two months, donating to homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters, food pantries, re-entry programs and more across the Midwest and Northeast. We’ve learned a lot along the way and want to share our tips for planning a mobile initiative, a.k.a. a multi-state road trip.

Lesson 1: Planning is Key. Planning any trip can be daunting. Our team brainstormed what we wanted the road trip to look like in several calls leading up to the planning. We started by identifying the best route to hit the most Affiliates per state that was also a reasonable drive from Maryland (our headquarters). Ultimately, the Midwest and Northeast made the most sense for meeting up with as many Affiliates as possible by van.

Lesson 2: Ask the Locals—and Celebrate Them, Too! Once we confirmed the dates with our Affiliate Directors, we asked each to plan one day for us to do a few donation drop-offs to social service organizations in their city, including meeting the local staff and touring their space. We also asked them to choose a few “notable” places throughout the city where we could take photos of the Vangina and planned to end the day by taking our Affiliates out to dinner.

Leading up to the trip, we asked each Affiliate what items their organizations needed to make sure that we packed the right donations in the van from our warehouse in Maryland.

Lesson 3: OVERcommunicate. Then Go With The Flow. Of course, there are always a few road bumps along the way. On our first tour, we realized that while we did a great job communicating internally, we did not excel at communicating externally with our Affiliates. That resulted in a few hiccups with scheduling and donations needed. Yet, our staff and Affiliates are used to being flexible and did a great job at going with the flow as plans changed.

Lesson 4: Share Everything in One Place. We fixed this for the second leg of the tour by creating a collaborative calendar with our Affiliates with timing, addresses, contact information and a list of requested donations for each organization. Before the trip, we shared the calendar with our Affiliates to confirm the information was correct.

Lesson 5: Promote Thyself. Our team could also improve at promoting the tour. We got so caught up with the planning and logistics that we neglected to promote our mobile initiative and its stops widely on social media or reach out to local media in advance. We documented the tour on social media while traveling, but we could have done a better job promoting the tour locations before we hit the road. For future tours, we plan to create a social media and media outreach strategy from the beginning so that it does not get lost while planning the other details of the trip.

Lesson 6: Rinse and Repeat. Overall, the 2021 Vangina Tour was a great success! We ticked the team-building and awareness-raising boxes with this initiative! It was incredible to physically see all of our Affiliate Directors’ amazing work in their communities. We hope that every honk on the highway or doubletake of the van while driving through our Affiliates’ cities led someone to look up ISTG and raise more awareness about our organization.

We also met our goal: We donated half a million products to areas and populations that we don’t typically reach.

Now that we know how feasible a do-gooder road trip, a.k.a. mobile initiative, is, we look forward to planning more and even more impactful Vangina Tours in the future!

Here at JSG & Associates, we support the passionate leaders who make nonprofits successful. For more information about us, visit our website.

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Dana Marlowe (She / Her / Hers) is the founder and executive director of I Support the Girls, which works to empower women experiencing homelessness, impoverishment or distress to stand tall with dignity. Since its founding, ISTG has collected and donated more than 16 million items.