Concept Refreshers
Planning and Evaluation
Successful outreach often hinges on the ability to plan, manage, and evaluate an outreach program. This module introduced participants to planning tools they can use to more effectively build and … Continue reading
Reframing to Fit Target Audience Decision Making
Message framing is a central concept for successful outreach. If we want to begin reaching new audiences, especially middle adopters, we must adjust our frames to draw in specific groups. … Continue reading
Finding, Preparing and Managing Speakers
Events can be a pivotal tool in reaching new audiences. While outreach professionals play a key role in setting the stage at events, they are not the only stakeholders who … Continue reading
Messaging to Middle Adopters
Let’s ditch the science for a second. To change the behaviors of middle adopters, we must speak their language. Avoiding perceived risks, being honest about conservation practices, and providing solutions … Continue reading
Behavior Change Concepts
Motivations First
Effective communication begins with understanding your intended audience. In persuasive communications, the next step is to understand what motivates people to take the actions we are promoting. In this short … Continue reading
Practice Characteristics
A wide range of factors can influence a farmer or landowners’ decision to adopt a new practice, but perhaps among the most important are the perceptions and attitudes people hold … Continue reading
Theory of Planned Behavior
Information alone is often not enough to influence a behavior change. Understanding how people actually make decisions is crucial for developing the right message to engage and influence your intended … Continue reading
Diffusion of Innovations
The Diffusion of Innovations model provides a visual understanding of how new ideas, technologies, or in our case, conservation agriculture practices, spread through a population. It also helps us segment … Continue reading
Outreach Planning
Overcoming Barriers by Encouraging Partnership
Conservation practices are one of the largest group projects ever. For a fully changed landscape and lasting change, sustainable partnerships and shared understandings must take priority in our planning efforts. … Continue reading
Planning for Outcomes
Effective outreach begins with planning. Your farmer engagement activities—field days, winter workshops, newsletters, social media posts—should all be designed strategically to accomplish your conservation goals. It is important to keep … Continue reading
SMART Planning: Designing Effective Outcomes
To be truly effective planning tools, your goals and desired outcomes need to be focused and measurable, so you can determine whether you are actually achieving them or not. The … Continue reading
Evaluation
Evaluation Idea: Exit Tickets
Keeping event evaluations short is often a successful strategy in getting audiences to complete them. Providing an incentive to complete them is another good strategy. Exit tickets tick both of … Continue reading
Evaluation Example: Plus/Delta
Sometimes you may just need some quick feedback about the positive and negative impressions of your events. If you only need some basic feedback from your audience, you may want … Continue reading
Using Interviews to Evaluate Outreach Programming
There are many ways to evaluate conservation outreach efforts. Most often, people lean toward things they can measure with numbers: how many people attended events, social media engagement, or how … Continue reading
Communications
Design Dos and Don’ts for Agricultural Outreach
As outreach professionals, we wear many hats. A few of these hats may include marketing and design for our events. It can be easy to fall into the trap of … Continue reading
Formulating Your Core Message
Ditching the science is a key part of telling your story. Why should people care? How does your program add value to the land and its people? What would happen … Continue reading
Creating User Personas
During one of our trainings, a participant came up to us and said that when they were in the grocery store they took note of products that jumped out to … Continue reading
Social Media Planning
After determining your communication plan, it is time to create your social media plan and start pushing content! During your brainstorming process, you want to keep in mind the different … Continue reading
Outreach Examples
Event Flier: Mastermind Dinner for Farm Women
Oftentimes, we want our events to be a catch-all. We try to get the largest number of attendees without truly diving into the different audiences we want to build relationships … Continue reading
Event Flier: Soil to Plate Excusive Dinner Event
It’s okay to think outside of the box! Farm walks and field days are plentiful; don’t be afraid to explore different types of events that will draw in new audiences. … Continue reading
Event Flier: Partnering With Farmers to Improve the Land
Farmers like events that are tailored to their specific landscapes and problems. Farmer’s first language can be used to draw in audiences that otherwise ignore event titles that heavily focus … Continue reading
Event Flier: Women Caring for the Land
Targeting specific audiences is a great example of using framing to reach new audiences. Women landowners are typically an underserved demographic that may find comfort in being in like-minded groups … Continue reading
In Action
Outreach In Action: Tammy and Darwin
Tammy and Darwin’s families go way back, having farmed together in central Iowa for generations. Their working relationship, built on trust and shared goals to be productive and right by … Continue reading
Outreach In Action: Solving Problems With Cover Crops
Sharing the numerous benefits of cover crops isn’t always enough. By framing a practice as a solution to a specific operational or resource problem your audience has, you can provide … Continue reading
Outreach in Action: The Roots
Effective outreach begins with being able to tell your “why”. This could include your reasons for conservation specifically, or for farming in general. Women Food & Ag Network’s (WFAN) Stewardship … Continue reading
Links
Conservation Decision Support Tools
Implementing conservation practices can be a complicated process, requiring access to numerous types of information to make the best decisions in a given production system. Numerous decision support tools exist … Continue reading
Outreach and Communication Resources
Finding high quality conservation images, infographics, or figures can be a challenge. Many of these resources exist (see the Outreach Examples page for many of these!), but locating them can … Continue reading
General Conservation Information
Implementing conservation practices can require significant technical skill and information. Luckily, there are numerous resources out there that provide information about how to implement, manage, and improve conservation and soil … Continue reading
Cover Crops
There are many fantastic resources about cover crop benefits, species selection, and management. These are some of the most useful websites, fact sheets, and organizations supporting this important soil health … Continue reading