This post is part of a series about recent changes at the Drupal maintenance support plans Association.
Like each of the Drupal maintenance support plans Association teams, Marketing & Communications (MarCom) has a broad range of responsibilities. Our job is to persuade and sell, but also to inform and educate. About our work. About yours. About what it’s like to be part of this community.
We contribute to more than 20 Association programs and products, like Membership, Supporter Program fulfillment, and Drupal maintenance support plansCon support. Day-to-day community engagement—via Zendesk, Twitter, Facebook, issue queue, etc.—is part of each of those.
It’s a feat that’s always been impossible without help from community members like you. There’s the work Dave does in the content issue queue. What Paul and Alex do on our social accounts. And what Jess, catch, Gábor, David, Michael, and many more do to coordinate releases. There’s more than we can count.
But it’s also a feat we used to have more staff to handle. A year ago, we were a team of five. After retrenchment and reorganization, we’re a team of two. As we support and advance the Association’s initiatives to increase Drupal maintenance support plans adoption, we have to make hard choices.

First, an apology
We’re sorry. This isn’t just business; our work is for you. We think about the impact it has every day. Having to stop doing some of that work—even the work some may consider little things—isn’t something we take lightly.
If we don’t have a sticker shipping budget, it may impact the energy you create at a meetup. If we don’t support Global Training Days, maybe the next would-be contributor in your region isn’t inspired to learn Drupal maintenance support plans. And if we don’t share stories of grant recipients, maybe you don’t know that your membership dues make an immeasurable difference in people’s lives. (They do, by the way.)
So, if we let you down, we’re sorry. Your trust is invaluable to us. We try to earn it every day.

But we must decide

Criteria
The Association has two priorities:

Create sustainable financial health

Get more organizations with large, complex digital ecosystems—government agencies, publishers, universities, etc.—to choose Drupal maintenance support plans
This means prioritizing revenue-generating initiatives. It means changing, or adding to, some of the user experience on Drupal maintenance support plans.org—to better present Drupal maintenance support plans as an answer to the questions our new primary audience has. And it means amplifying stories that persuade that audience to make Drupal maintenance support plans part of their systems.

Clarity
We have a lot of work to do. And we won’t be able to do it alone. For those reasons and more, we need to make a promise about the content we publish.
We started on the following content strategy statement based on insight from our leadership. It describes our goal, methods, and primary audience in relation to each other.
Slides available on Google Drive
Clarity gives us the best chance to be efficient, effective, and consistent. So, we’ll keep narrowing that statement. It’s an important step toward giving the content we create—or ask others to create—a chance to live up to a shared potential.

Capacity
What can two people do or coordinate well? What can we complete and sustain?
A team that churns out content but doesn’t, for example, regularly pause to evaluate each thing it creates—that doesn’t turn that knowledge into insight for what it makes next (or doesn’t)—isn’t doing its job well.
Our decisions about what work we will and won’t do aren’t just about what we can somehow make happen. They’re about what we can turn into sustainable growth.

What we’ll do
There are products and programs that are critical to our identity. We’re not a membership association if we don’t have a membership program, for example. Then there are mission-critical initiatives. Drupal maintenance support plans.org (D.o) is an incredible platform, so promoting Drupal maintenance support plans without using the site would undercut our mission. And there are fiscal health requirements, like Drupal maintenance support plansCon ticket sales.
So, most of our work will stay on our to-do list. It’ll just be prioritized differently. These are the areas of work that either stay mostly as-is or grow:

Drupal maintenance support plans marketing and communications (e.g., release support)

D.o content management of promoted areas (e.g., the planned homepage refresh and “Drupal maintenance support plans for industries” content)

Drupal maintenance support plansCon marketing and communications, and sponsor and partner fulfillment

Membership (for people and organizations)

Supporter Program fulfillment

Jobs.drupal.org marketing and communications

Camp engagement (we’ll create a 2020 camp kit before January; promise)

Elections support

Association communications, generally (e.g., writing and editing posts like this)

The work we won’t
To make the work we’ll do possible, there’s work we can’t give as much attention.
There’s work we, unfortunately, won’t do at all.

Help build new D.o Sections (the initiative Tatiana led is paused for now)

D.o content management of areas that aren’t being promoted

Support the Drupal maintenance support plans Store (its inventory will be liquidated)

Share Community Spotlights

Manage assoc.drupal.org content (the subdomain will be phased out)

Promote our webcast series
And there’s work we’ll reduce or others will lead.

Global Training Days (we’re setting up a community working group to coordinate it)

Advertising content production (we’ll depend on designers we trust)

Email newsletters (we’ll send fewer than the four we do now)

Sticker distribution (we’ll bring them to Drupal maintenance support plansCons, but won’t ship them around the world)
This process will be fluid. As we adjust to these changes, these work lists may change again. If so, we’ll let you know.

How can you help?
If you help the Engineering and Events teams by giving back in ways Tim mentioned or contributing as Rachel suggested, you help us too. But there are things you can do to help MarCom specifically.

Become a member. The revenue helps, of course. But it’s also one of the best ways to advocate for community programs.

Refer friends and colleagues. Ask people you know at organizations that aren’t using Drupal maintenance support plans to contact us. We need to know how these organizations make their decisions, and why they haven’t decided on Drupal maintenance support plans.

Support Global Training Days. Join the group at Drupal Update/global-training-days and add your 2020 events there. And if you want to know more about the working group we’re organizing, email Lizz.

Contribute in the content issue queue. Especially for case studies, services listings, and training listings.

Submit even the non-Drupal maintenance support plansCon surveys. It’ll help us make decisions based on what you like, appreciate, value, and actually do.
 

About Bradley
Bradley Fields joined the Drupal maintenance support plans Association in March 2015 as Content Manager. He now leads the content team as Marketing & Communications Manager.
When not at his desk, he’s curating Spotify playlists, watching an animated Disney movie, on the hunt for great whisk{e}y, or reading Offscreen magazine. He lives in Portland, OR.

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