GROUP MEMBERS:

Mitchell Belcher
Kirsten Cabodi
Sean Donnelly
Brandon Fish
Zachary Ryland
Blake Yonago

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Our group worked as a marketing team for the Cascade Vocational Services HandprintArts program. Cascade Vocational Services (CVS) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the well-being and independence of the disabled population in Western Washington. Specifically, they help adults with disabilities in Bellingham, Lynden, and Mt. Vernon in seeking and successfully sustaining community-integrated employment. Handprint Arts (HPA) works in conjunction with Cascade Vocational Services in supporting individuals with disabilities to enter the economy. The HandprintArts mission statement is to provide a venue of income for artists with disabilities where they, like everyone else, can find purpose and meaning in the experience of inborn talent. We are endeavoring, by connecting our community through creativity, to improve the quality of life for all.

As a team we began with a proposal for the non-profit organization to gather supplies for the artists, as well as linking the artists with disabilities to a teaching environment. In our initial meeting with the HandprintArts representative Linda Hughes, it became apparent that the needs of the organization were much different than what we had suspected. The program was severely lacking in community awareness, and the best way to help the artists with disabilities was to create a marketing campaign for the gallery. For our social change project, our team built a mission to: Create awareness of the HandprintArts organization and focus attention on drawing in more business to the Gallery. The tactics we chose to use to accomplish this goal were to market the ‘cause’ as well as the art in the gallery, use integrated marketing with all collateral and marketing tools, and to get the community involved by representing HandprintArts for the Holiday Craft Fair at Christ the King church.

After creating an informative, attractive brochure for HPA we then integrated those graphics, colors and slogans into a creative display for the show. We included a video slideshow playing continuously on a flat screen TV at our booth, along with the brochures and candy-cane-coupons to distribute. Using our personal selling and marketing skills, we worked very hard at the event to make sure each person passing by our booth was contacted in some way. The feedback from the attendees of the art show was outstanding. Majority of the people we spoke with left our booth inspired, informed about HandprintArts, and appeared to be genuinely interested in the event we were promoting at the gallery.

Linking our efforts to the Utilitarian framework we did a cost benefit analysis. We were successful in passing out over 220 coupons and predict at least a 10% return in customers to the Fresh Paint II event we were promoting. Although our event has not happened yet we chose to make this prediction based on the feedback we got from our target market (it was noted that about 20+ people actually said they were coming to the event.) Our costs totaled $661.25 and based on the lowest predicted benefits of $715 we will be successful in that our benefits outweigh the costs (see Costs chart and Projected benefits on page 4-5.) Also note the benefit of creating awareness and interacting with the artists with disabilities, giving them meaning and value to expressing their artistic talents. This greatly outweighs the costs of our time, small amount of money spent, and overall effort of the group members.

The two other ethical frameworks that relate best to our project are the Justice Theory and Ethics of Care. The ethics of care is displayed greatly throughout the organization and those who come in contact with it. A large part of our success was in the caring relationships created between the group members and adults with disabilities. HandprintArts and Cascade Vocational Services have recognized that these people with disabilities find meaning and value to their lives through caring relationships, and with the help of HandprintArts and our group they have the opportunity to express themselves and integrate with the larger community. This brings me to our last framework, the Justice Theory.

The idea behind justice theory speaks of fairness and equality in terms of both opportunities and burdens. A basic principle states “social and economic inequalities are arranged so that they are reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage…” (Weiss, 128). Furthermore, many critics claim sometimes the disadvantaged are not fairly treated when “only equal opportunity is offered.” The disadvantaged, in this case people with disabilities, are entitled to a fair opportunity to support themselves and be a functioning member of society. Justice theory dictates the economic system is unfair to individuals with disabilities who need more than equal opportunity. Therefore, it is only right for organizations such as Cascade Vocational Services to be in existence. It is relevant to note that Cascade Vocational Services has created a mechanism to further ensure fairness by integrating both artist with disabilities and other artists in the community to be displayed side-by-side in the Handprint Art Gallery.

Our project team has helped support Cascade Vocational Services and the HandprintArt Gallery by creating awareness for the upcoming holiday sales event. The actions we have taken supplement the social contract and therefore improved equal opportunity for some members of society. Through the perspective of Distributive Justice Theory, everyone should give back to help the disadvantaged and ensure fairness. The success of our project not only lies in the profits of the gallery at our upcoming event and future sales, but in caring relationships with the artists with disabilities. We reached our main goals of creating awareness and drawing attention to the gallery, and feel that it is important to recognize the dedication of HandprintArts to integrating artists with disabilities with the larger art community, treating them as equals. Our final hope is that promotional tools created for the organization, along with a media suggestion package will encourage the organization to continue the marketing efforts we began.