Supporting and Inspiring Member Organizations
The Association of Independent Research Institutes (AIRI) came to us in 2024, when they needed to build their first-ever communications strategy. The goal: attract, support and empower member organizations, by sharing valuable information that helps them do their work, while also showcasing why being part of AIRI is valuable. This became even more important in early 2025, when the federal government proposed steep NIH funding cuts and policy makers’ support for research reached a new low.
The Solution
We worked with the AIRI team by:
- Holding workshops with their communications committee and other leaders to define their business and communications goals.
- Developing value propositions and core messages that articulate AIRI’s mission, how they make a difference for their members, and why advancing scientific research is important.
- Conducting audience research, including a survey and conversations with a handful of members, to better understand what types of communications they want to receive from AIRI and how they want to receive them.
This process revealed that members:
- Prefer email communications (top preference for 98% of members).
- Want to hear from AIRI monthly or “as needed” if big news or events happen.
- Are most interested in information that:
- Helps them do their jobs better
- Updates them on federal policy changes
- Provides benchmarks that help them understand where their institute stands relative to peers
- Wanted an up-to-date way to share information between members, instead of the listservs they’d been using for years.
We recommended and launched:
- A monthly e-ewsletter that includes policy updates, feature articles sharing expertise from AIRI members, and announcements about things like new discoveries and new members.
- A Slack platform with channels to help AIRI professionals working in areas like IT, HR, fundraising and marketing/communications exchange ideas and best practices.
The Results
- The e-newsletter’s open and click-through rates are above industry standards:
- 42% open rate (industry average: ~35%)
- 8% click-through rate (industry average: ~4%)
- Over 100 members from 50+ orgs joined Slack and regularly use it to ask each other questions and troubleshoot challenges.
- Anecdotal feedback from members saying they appreciate the feature articles that share insights from members. One member wrote: “I particularly enjoyed the article on how to improve fundraising in today’s challenging climate. It’s well done, has a lot of depth and should lead to further discussions in AIRI development departments about how we can better engage donors in these tricky times.”
