PA Doctrine spells out several good reasons for doing community relations. You’re not going to find doctrine on MaxDis friends. Let’s talk about experience.
Helping to define and protect your organization’s reputation is potentially the most important thing you do as a PAO. Organizational reputation gets you resources, the freedom to operate and the support you need to do it. Community relations is a key part of protecting your organization’s rep.
You know the foolish cartoon, PAO – Break Glass in Case of Emergency? That couldn’t be more wrong. You want to survive an emergency? You have to act now so your organization’s reputation can survive a grievous public event – your organization will definitely screw something up, we all do. You have to invest now to be ready.
When something horrible happens. The community will support you based on their knowledge and interaction with you. Community relations builds that knowledge.
A few years ago the organization I was a part of was blamed for the death of a local kid. The Special Forces dive school in Key West has a decompression chamber which is set up to treat divers effected by ‘the bends.’ A kid, on vacation with his dad, died due to this sort of dive injury. Some people in the community, for whatever reason, alleged our school refused emergency lifesaving treatment.
Key West is a small place and the school depends on the community to operate. Lack of community support could have been a severe problem for the school.
Luckily, the staff at the school was smart (ahead of time). The school doc had years of partnership with the local hospital. Community leaders were invited to all of their major events. The cadre at the school had become a large part of the community and culture. Dave and I have had the pleasure of drinking beers on several occasions with the local reporter who covered the small military beat.
Needless to say, in this instance, the entire community condemned our accusers. Through social media, comments on articles and public discussion the community came directly to the support of our school.
Most of us don’t work in Key West. Most of the time you are part of a larger community with multiple organizations. Do your part, and when you do – make sure they know who you are. Your organization’s name will be in the newspaper someday for some terrible reason.
If you think Target and Walmart do community events out of the goodness of their hearts or even for advertising you’re wrong. Good organizations invest and do community relations in order to protect their reputations when crisis strikes.
Crisis will strike.
One more thing – community relations is good for morale (this actually is in doctrine). Doing things with the community makes members of your organizations feel good and builds better teams.
