Volunteers of America / Community Communications

Identity | Campaigns | Digital communication | Grant Management

Contribution

For over 125 years, Volunteers of America (VOA) has been one of the nation’s most recognized and trusted human-service organizations. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, rural communities across Western Nebraska faced acute, compounding challenges—ranging from severe lockdown isolation and public health emergencies to regional food insecurity and childcare shortages. Addressing these urgent community needs required more than operational logistics; it demanded an immediate, empathetic, and cohesive multi-channel communications strategy that leveraged VOA’s national brand recognition to build local trust, mobilize philanthropic support, and connect vulnerable populations with essential services, including web imagery for community-facing communication.

Stepping into the role of Director of Program Operations during the pandemic was both a deeply personal commitment to help my community through a time of crisis and a deliberate professional pivot to round out my executive skill set in the nonprofit sector. By bridging human-service operations and hands-on creative direction, I translated VOA’s national brand standards into localized campaign identities, print collateral, and multi-channel digital outreach. My visual and strategic deliverables included designing CDC- and DHHS-aligned public health and vaccination campaigns, creating the brand identity for the Florece controlled-environment agriculture program, and producing targeted fundraising, recruitment, and awareness assets for regional food pantries, thrift operations, and early childhood education centers. By uniting grant development and cross-departmental program management with clear, compassionate visual storytelling, I helped expand organizational capacity and build sustainable community infrastructure when the region needed it most.