Teach Indy

Turning a Strategic Plan into a Compelling Story

The Opportunity: Teach Indy, a nonprofit that focuses on improving student outcomes by elevating the teaching profession, had just undergone a strategic planning process. They needed a way to translate their new, multi-pronged strategy into a relatable narrative for teachers, education leaders, and prospective funders. They engaged Pen+Principle to help craft that narrative and create a strategy for bringing it to life.

Pen+Principle’s Approach: Telling Teach Indy’s story was about more than the tactics in its strategic plan; to help craft the narrative, we needed to understand what makes Teach Indy stand apart from other organizations. To unearth this, we interviewed the organization’s leaders and led a creative ideation/ strategy session (a “Discovery Session”) with the foremost audience Teach Indy is designed to serve: teachers. From this research, it became clear that Teach Indy is different because they view teachers as community leaders and problem-solvers, and they treat them as such in order to elevate the profession and improve outcomes for students. We built a narrative around that, and we made teachers the key messengers delivering that narrative because they can speak directly to this approach and why it’s important.

Results: Based on these recommendations, Pen+Principle has reworked Teach Indy’s website with this language and framing front and center – while simplifying the site navigation for a busy teacher audience. We have also created key collateral – such as one-pagers, emails, and other assets – that can be used to capture the story. We launched a blog and video series, “Teachers Leading Change,” to help showcase the stories of teacher leaders in Indianapolis, and we supported Teach Indy’s public launch of a local fellowship that empowers teachers to solve retention challenges facing the profession. Media support around that announcement generated unique articles in Chalkbeat Indiana, the Indianapolis Star, Mirror Indy, and WTHR.