What?

An introduction to community building. Learn practical ways to build long term relationships with your stakeholders to drive impact and growth.

Join Rosie Jacobs from Independent Oxford and Annabel Lee from Annabel Lee Communications for a practical and inspiring morning to discover why community building is important for your organisation, how to build a community strategy, and who the stakeholders are that make up your community.

This session will cover:

• Understanding the needs of your customers and wider stakeholders to add value and brand loyalty
• Community = communication – how to onboard, maintain and grow relationships
• Steering Committees and how these can help you stay on track
• How to create value through community interactions
• Events and how best to structure these to provide impact and growth
• Managing focus groups and long-term customer relationships
• Niche or not to niche – the difference between networks and communities
• Content planning and channels

Who is it for?

Social entrepreneurs who want to better leverage the social or environmental benefit of their business or organisation to drive growth and scale impact. You might run, or work for, an indie business, social enterprise or trading charity in Oxfordshire.

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This is session 3 of 5 Marketing with a Mission Masterclasses at Arts at the Old Fire Station

These workshops are designed to help you leverage your social & environmental impact to raise your profile and drive engagement.

The sessions:

Wednesday 23/11/22 – Content Planning with Purpose – defining your purpose & creating content that supports your vision & mission

Thursday 08/12/22 – Marketing & impact – how to communicate impact to inspire and spark action

Thursday 19/01/23 – Community building – how to build sustainable relationships with your stakeholders that help to grow your enterprise

Thursday 09/02/23 – Mission driven PR & Media – how to build your network and attract positive press & PR

Thursday 16/03/23 – Routes To Market – how to maximise the reach of your social enterprise, balancing commerce and social enterprise with Julie Macken, Co-Founder of Neve’s Bees

Facilitators

Rosie Jacobs, Director of Independent Oxford

Rosie is Co-Founder and Director of Independent Oxford, a membership organisation that supports and promotes independent businesses in Oxfordshire, with a vision to create a society where everyone values local. What started as a monthly meet up for indies, has now grown into a community of over 150 businesses, who support each other and champion the value of buying local. The Independent Oxford website has over 20k views a month, and the IO social channels and newsletter reach 18k+ followers.

Rosie is passionate about building strong communities, and championing social and environmental positive impact organisations through story telling.

Annabel Lee, Founder of Annabel Lee Communications

Annabel is a freelance writer and communications consultant. Her writing has appeared in Red Magazine, Glamour, Metro and Huffington Post.⁠ She has 15 years’ experience working with organisations to help them get clear on their story and share it with the world. Having worked at award winning PR agencies for over a decade, she now works independently with purpose driven businesses, and is on a mission to demystify PR and marketing, and make it easy, stress-free and impactful.

About eScalate

eScalate, is a three-year project, part funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) which runs until April 2023 to support Social Enterprises, social entrepreneurs, enterprising charities and purposeful businesses in Oxfordshire.

Support includes:

• one to ones
• workshops
• peer support sessions

For more information about the eScalate programme , visit www.oxfordshirelep.com/escalate

Please note that this event is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and is delivered as part of the eScalate programme to help SMEs. By engaging in this programme you are being offered assistance under the De Minimis regulation which allows a company to receive up to but not exceeding €200,000 of public funding (at the applicable exchange rate) of De Minimis aid over a rolling three-tax year fiscal period. This De Minimis declaration does not cover undertakings engaged in: the primary production of agricultural goods and fisheries/aquaculture, road freight, services of general economic interest and export related activities and activities favouring domestic over imported goods. Please note, support cannot be given to undertakings (businesses) in difficulty. In order to receive support from this programme, you will be required to complete an application form and other relevant documentation. If you need to check your current position for state aid please contact us. If you would like any further information on De Minimis aid and Special Drawing Rights (SDR) subsidies, please see the state aid page on the OxLEP Business website:

https://oxlepbusiness.co.uk/state-aid