Key Material for a Quick View of Highlights
- Annual Report issued – Published the STEPS 2023 Annual Report with interesting and easy-to-read summaries that show who we serve, how we help people, real-life stories, testimonials, key facts, 2023 highlights, 2024 strategy, financial summary, and our boards.
- Must-see highlights – See all the videos on this page and key items in orange plus the new Online Toolkit Improving Your Relationships One Step at a Time, the Content Portal on Proactive Parenting – Oak Mountain Presbyterian Church, and the ParentU Podcast.
- “About STEPS” information – To help communicate what STEPS does and ongoing accomplishments, updated the About STEPS web page with resource links like the STEPS is Making a Difference video, STEPS Highlights page, and STEPS Ministries Newsletters page.
First-quarter progress on 2024 strategy
“Family Wellness & Personal Life Skills” – Initiative and resources to the whole family
- Executing the strategy – In this newsletter, see the 10 items highlighted in this color that align to our stated 2024 strategy.
- Suite of presentations – Created an integrated set of presentations to speak and teach across the strategic areas and audiences.
Disadvantaged families and groups – New program for diverse, under-served areas
- Banks Academy (northeast Birmingham) – Developed plans with Banks staff, spoke at school-wide assembly, and held student focus group. Content rated highly by students as 9.5 of 10 on importance and usefulness. Comments included: “I really think this is a good idea, and I truly am blessed to get this opportunity.” “I like how the program came in the nick of time in my life.” “I just love the program.”
- Program plans for Banks Academy – Developed the overall curriculum and early content leading to full program roll-out in Fall of 2024.
- See the one-minute video below highlighting the approach and the student feedback …
- Renew Birmingham (Ensley) – Organized program, performed research, created strategy and approach, developed curriculum and initial content, served as youth mentor in 4-day retreat, presented to group of teenagers, and built plans for roll-out in the Fall of 2024.
- Disadvantaged youth curriculum – Content being created for underserved teenagers addresses emotional, mental, social, spiritual, and personal life skills including character, values, awareness, coping, prevention, emotional intelligence, learning, choices, and intentionality.
- See the short video below with Renew Birmingham staff and an early teaching example …
Reaching and equipping teens directly – Help youth fulfill their potential
- Teenager education – Created new content for teens, evaluated in-person and digital delivery options, and began running focus groups. In addition to new teen-specific content, we are leveraging education for parents and youth and cross-learning with disadvantaged youth.
- With content in place, we are working on in-person and digital delivery options with one example shown below …
Wellness life skills family training – Help adult and youth family members
- Announced new Online Toolkit – Includes exciting new features including live-recorded videos, flip-slide how-to examples, podcast versions of the lessons, and workbook along with summary videos, application questions, supporting resources, and improved navigation.
- The Online Toolkit banner is shown below, so check out the toolkit here – Improving Your Relationships One Step at a Time
- Church program – Executing a program with a church Content Portal to provide a suite of family education to church members.
- Speaking at organizations – STEPS speaks to audiences on topics related to our online education. For example, we spoke at both Sunday services plus a live-stream to church members and received excellent feedback and encouragement on the material.
- As an example of our speaking, see a short opening segment of a talk on “Improving Relationships” below …
Escalate impact on parents of teens – Scale growth of parenting of teens education
- Podcast for parents – Hear a summary of what our parenting of teens ministry is about here: ParentU Podcast.
- Church program -Spoke to parenting class with new Proactive Parenting presentation, Teaching is part of an overall church program that also includes the Online Toolkit below, recording a podcast, weekly email newsletter updates to church members, and other actions.
- Flyers and ads – Created informational flyers to go to hundreds of parents via Grace Klein Community to create awareness and link to resources. Flyers to be used with other organizations. Created digital ads for churches, groups, and STEPS to promote Online Toolkits.
- Outreach – Reached out to 72 churches to offer services and building a repeatable outreach strategy, process, emails, and contact lists.
Multiplication via collaboration – Partner with groups with Content Portals
- Church Content Portals – STEPS can now deliver replicable, scalable Content Portals to churches and other organizations which offer a flexible suite of Online Toolkits that are aligned to the areas in our “Family Wellness & Personal Life Skills” initiative.
- Collaboration partners – Focusing on our initial partners to expand usage and learn and will add more partners in coming months.
- See a Content Portal that offers education across our strategy here – Family Wellness and Personal Life Skills Church Content Portal
Segmented ministry campaigns – Build targeted education for selected segments
- Serving mothers – As a pilot for segment campaigns, developed content targeted especially for mothers such as a testimonial-and-facts video on “STEPS Helping Moms, Teenagers, and Families” and a blog article titled “Encouragement and Help for Alabama Moms.”
- Target segments – Online Toolkits (e.g. parents, teens, kids, older youth, family members) designed so it can be used to target groups.
Parents of kids in elementary school – Proactive parenting to raise great children
- New material – Built a presentation and the content for an Online Toolkit for parents of younger children to be completed during 2Q24.
Parents of young people in college – Equipping older youth to handle real life
- New material – Built presentation and content for an Online Toolkit for college-age kids and young adults to be completed during 2Q24.
Caregivers in the parenting role – Educating those thrust into the parenting role
- Future plans – No new content created but built a plan for adapting and simplifying parenting material to serve caregivers.
Digital Outreach with social media and blogs
Social Media
- YouTube videos – Published 23 videos with 760 views on our still-new channel and captured all our teaching videos on the channel.
- Social media posts – Published 45 posts on 3 social channels reaching 9200 people to create awareness and plant seeds of hope like:
- “How transformation and awareness help our relationships”
- “STEPS is a breakthrough book with proven techniques”
- “Faith is being sure of what we hope for”
- See a short example of a social media post that ties into our content and education below …
Blogs
Weekly blogs going to our overall email audience:
- Living Intentionally – How to Make the New Year Better Than the Old Year
- 4Q23 Newsletter – STEPS Newsletter: 2024 New News & Fourth Quarter Highlights
- Proactive Parenting – What Kind of Parent Are You? and What Kind of Parent Are You? (Part 2)
- Blog series on Improving Relationships:
- Improving Your Relationships One Step at a Time
- Letting Go of Control to Improve Your Relationships
- How Being Self-Aware Will Improve Your Communication
- Investing in Real Conversations to Increase Connection
- Building Good Relationship Habits One Step at a Time
- Relationships Happen When You Focus on Others
- How to Improve Your Relationships: Big Ideas & Small Steps
- How To Develop Community and Good Relationships
Examples of parenting weekly blog that also goes to families:
- Providing Protection for Our Kids
- Parent Awareness Can Help Prevent a Crisis
- Accepting Responsibility for Our Parenting
- Being Prepared for the Worst with Your Teenagers
Other Areas and Operations
- Finances and bookkeeping – STEPS Finance Manager executed weekly processes to ensure the integrity and reliability of our financial data. This included reconciliations of accounts and issues to ensure accuracy and completeness. Closed out for the fiscal year 2023.
- Grants to foundations – Ramped up research and submissions to foundations, conducted lessons learned interviews, updated our 2024 grant plan, mailed out 70 annual reports, subscribed to the Foundation Directory, and increased search for family foundations.
- Coaching and consulting – STEPS conducted individual coaching with individuals and consulted and collaborated with organizations.
- Professional development – The Executive Director conducts ongoing learning through research, reading, recovery meetings, spiritual groups and meetings, a business leader mentoring group, other meetings, and conversations with those we serve and stakeholders.
How you can help
During 2Q24, STEPS will search for and hopefully acquire more resources for our team to reach and serve the most people possible, especially with for reaching disadvantaged teenagers and social media. You can help by donating to STEPS to help fund these areas, connecting us to potential donors or foundations, and connecting us to individuals or organizations with the right skills.
We hope you found this newsletter informative, and feel free to reach out to us with questions, ideas, or ways you can help. If you didn’t check it out already above, make sure you open up and glance through the STEPS 2023 Annual Report. Thanks for your support!
