A nonprofit communications reset

The challenge

The Contemporary Freudian Society (CFS) had considerable history as a highly accredited psychoanalytic society. Plus, their Institute had a well-deserved reputation for providing rigorous professional training. However, in 2014 they realized they faced some complex and urgent challenges. First, their entire field was struggling to communicate the advantages of their approach to treatment. Second, CFS was grappling with how to best give equitable visibility to both their centers of operation – the New York Metro area and Greater Washington DC. Finally, although their Society and Institute websites had been thoughtfully designed several years earlier, both were hardcoded in HTML.  Consequently, their sites weren’t responsive to mobile devices, and they were expensive to maintain as platforms to publish new content. CFS realized they needed a major nonprofit communications reset.

What we did

At the outset, Public Voice NY worked with NY and DC area members and training candidates to achieve a complete nonprofit marketing reset. Then, we identified the unique role of the Society as a professional community of practice. Next, with our design team member, Amy Pollack, we focused on writing and designing a new suite of print materials. These included those looking for a therapist, those who needed to make therapy referrals, and those seeking training.

Last, but certainly not least, we built new, responsive Society and Institute websites with several new areas of functionality:

• A searchable database of member therapists,
• The capacity to showcase content geared to both the general public and the analytic community,
• Access for faculty to update course syllabi, class schedules, and other candidate resources, and
• An online calendar and registration for public and professional education events in both of their locales.

The results

Consequently, the Society’s NY and DC locales hammered out ways to share visibility and coordinate their web and social media content.  Additionally, they produced a greatly expanded and richer copy deck and undertook the training to be able to upload and manage it.  Now, CFS and its Training Institute are able to offer all their audiences a rich set of communications assets and digital content, in clearly organized, accessible formats. Our training has enabled staff to add new content regularly. And their investment has already paid for itself in reduced hosting and maintenance costs. The sites have continued to serve them as they’ve grown and developed.

CFS leadership had this to say about the results of their nonprofit communications reset: “Simha really studied our organization and got the feel of us. We were all delighted with the final outcome.”

To see more, visit contemporaryfreudiansociety.org and www.instituteofcfs.org. Or scroll down to see before and after screenshots of the Society website.