SALVATION ARMY CENTRAL VIRGINIA AREA COMMAND

Leveraging stakeholder engagement to secure $7M investment to address homelessness in the City of Richmond.

Challenge

The Salvation Army Central Virginia Area Command (CVAC) serves individuals across 16 localities through the Men and Families Housing First Shelter, Inclement Weather Shelter, food assistance, canteen ministry, rent and utility assistance, The Salvation Army Boys & Girls Club and the Corps/Church.

The organization came to Shannon Strategies to help pass a set of three ordinances that would establish a historic partnership between the city and CVAC to address homelessness, including a $7 million investment from the city to build and renovate a new multipurpose facility. The legislation would be transformational and offer long-needed relief to address capacity and resource issues through:

  • The Center of Hope: A multi-purpose shelter facility that will have the capacity to serve families and single adults and offer an array of programs and resources through partnerships with the City’s Department of Human Services and other local organizations.

  • A Community Resource Center: A dedicated space within the facility run by the city that would offer comprehensive wrap-around city services for Richmonders experiencing homelessness or at risk of becoming homeless. 

  • Additional Emergency and Inclement Weather Shelters: A plan to increase the city’s capacity to open and operate an inclement weather shelter and a year-round emergency shelter within the 1900 Chamberlayne facility.

Our team would need to successfully persuade Richmond City Council to vote for the measure within a three-week timeframe.

Our Approach

For this issue campaign, we focused on securing a majority of votes before the City Council meeting. We aimed to meet with every member of Richmond City Council, attend legislative hearings, and raise awareness through public media. As a city initiative, our team also worked with members of the mayor’s administration to ensure the passage of the legislation.

Our advocacy strategy focused on:

  • Stakeholder consensus: Coordinating and facilitating meetings with a majority of council members to inform them about the project and address any concerns before the council vote. Additionally, the client met with invested community partners to gain their support.

  • Persuasion: Facing opposition on City Council, we used backchannels and leveraged partners throughout the community and City Hall to persuade holdouts.

  • Simplified messaging: Distilling technical ordinances into a user-friendly one-pager outlining the historic proposal, its importance and the numerous benefits for residents in the region. 

  • Generating an evergreen call-to-action: Creating an advocacy toolkit with sample social media messages, an email and phone script, shareable graphics and guidance on writing a letter to the editor so the organization has evergreen content for long-term campaigns.

  • Legislative tracking: Understanding the legislative path of the bill, including public hearings before city commissions, to leverage all opportunities for public comment.

  • Pitching: Setting the stage ahead of the council vote, we pitched stories to local media to garner media coverage and highlight the win for the community.

Results

Richmond City Council unanimously passed all three ordinances, establishing a first-of-its-kind partnership as part of the city’s 10-year strategy to end homelessness. The stakeholder consensus we helped foster led to a joint press statement from CVAC, the City of Richmond, impacted residents and two city councilors - including the representative’s district where the Center of Hope is housed.

We generated press coverage of the council vote from six local media outlets in print, radio and television while also landing featured interviews for CVAC leadership.

Key media wins: