2024 Communications Planning Summit

The Boone and Crockett Club’s 2024 Communications Planning Summit was held April 4-5, 2024, at the First Interstate Bank in Missoula. The Summit opened with an overview by Club CEO Tony Schoonen outlining the growth of the Club’s communications efforts within the context of the 2020-2025 Strategic Plan, and Director of Communications Jodi Stemler providing a brief overview of those efforts and results in recent years. The goal of the meeting was to identify the things we are doing well, challenges that we face, and identify some specific opportunities for either expansion of current efforts or new projects to raise the Club’s visibility and fundraising capabilities.

The Club has excelled in recent years developing new content and materials that drive traffic to the website—a priority has been trying to check as many boxes as possible with one article that is shared across communications vehicles. With the increase in content and growth of web and social media views, we have a greater opportunity to monetize the communications program. Continuing to tell our story better and having cohesive brand messaging and content will allow us to expand our audience which will lead to increased memberships and corporate partnerships.

During the discussion, the group developed a broad list of potential priorities and then “dot voted” the ideas to identify what the participants thought were the most important. On the second day, we focused on fleshing out actions we could take to implement these priorities, or more fully develop a plan around the priorities, in the coming fiscal year. We discussed the importance of making a more aggressive push for stories and content that promote Fair Chase and hunting ethics and to focus even more on current Club activities. We talked about a new multimedia “Stories Around the Campfire” effort and increasing promotion of the University Programs—we also discussed implementing surveys and polls to learn more about how our outreach efforts are being received.

After summarizing the notes from the meeting, the communications team organized a follow up Zoom meeting on April 25 to brief those who were unable to come to the in-person meeting and seek their input. From these two meetings, the communications team has a strong path forward for the coming year to help improve our outreach activities and we will be continuing to increase our engagement with members throughout the year. If you are interested in being more involved with the any of the Communications Committee or Subcommittee efforts, please reach out to Jodi Stemler.

Download Communications Summit Summary