Adolescent Counseling Services Uses PR to Boost Funding from Corporate Grants

Adolescent Counseling Services (ACS), a community-based nonprofit agency, serves close to 1,300 economically and/or emotionally challenged teens a year in Santa Clara County. It runs three programs that have received numerous accolades from the community: Caravan House, a group home in Palo Alto for teenage girls, an Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment Program that provides affordable treatment to teens struggling with drug and/or alcohol abuse and an On-Campus Counseling Program for students in crisis at Palo Alto secondary schools.

Although ACS has been a well-respected member of the community for 28 years, the extent of its services were not very well known. Like most nonprofits, each member of its professional staff wears many hats. For example, in addition to managing corporate contributions and private donations, ACS Director of Development Kara Mullen also serves as liaison to the individual programs and to the ACS board of directors. Philippe Rey, Psy.D., is both the director of marketing and public relations and associate director of the agency.

To make grant applications more persuasive, Mar Junge integrated news from all of ACS’ regional marketing and PR activities, in addition to statistics on national trends. This increased the agency’s credibility and improved its chances for funding. By using C3PR’s grantwriting services, ACS received more corporate funding in Fiscal 2001-02 than in any other year in the agency’s history. In the first six months of Fiscal 2002-03, corporate contributions have already exceeded $100,000. This is particularly remarkable, considering that the depressed economy has reduced contributions from foundations and corporations to most nonprofits.