CreateAthon 18: Aloha from the TRIO Lū’au!

Aloha! TRIO’s back from a two-day excursion to the sunny shores of our CreateAthon 2024. This year’s marketing lū’au saw our big kahunas ride the waves of creativity as we built websites from scratch, crafted giving campaigns and created fresh marketing collateral for 2025.

The party kicked off on Thursday, Oct. 24. After being welcomed with leis, our Mililani native Kerry bestowed TRIO members with honorary Hawaiian names, each with special meaning. Fueled with excitement, we broke off and got down to business. 

Since CreateAthon planning began on Jan. 1, 2024, Team TRIO has donated more than $100,000 in pro bono marketing efforts. This year, we were grateful to welcome five more Lowcountry nonprofits into our CreateAthon ohana.

Blessed Hands Food Pantry

Located in Goose Creek, South Carolina, Blessed Hands Food Pantry is helping fight hunger by providing our communities with nutritional food and other needed resources. We had the opportunity to support this deserving team.

Our work for Blessed Hands focused on building a strong foundation to help expand their reach and impact in the community. We crafted a new website from the ground up, designing a user-friendly layout and writing copy that captures the heart of its mission. To enhance visibility, we also developed a tailored social media calendar, providing a month’s worth of content ideas to engage followers and attract supporters. Our design team created a set of professional business cards to aid in outreach and donor engagement, as well as a brand standards guide to ensure consistent messaging. Together, these tools will empower Blessed Hands to foster deeper connections with the community and mobilize resources for its fight against hunger.

Dragon Boat Charleston

Since 2003, Dragon Boat Charleston (DBC) has worked to redefine cancer survivorship, helping members find new strength in a supportive community. This nonprofit nourishes cancer survivors’ minds, bodies and spirits. 

DBC has a powerful community at its paddlers’ back. Team TRIO wanted to help this nonprofit further its momentum for greater reach and support. We designed a new rack card to help spread this floating support network’s reach, drafted a month-long social media calendar to strengthen its online presence and made repairs to its existing website. To further the success of the Charleston Dragon Boat Festival, the group’s largest fundraising effort, our PR/media specialist drafted a press release and media alert to help get the word out.

Let’s Walk

Did you know that experts liken the physical health effects of social isolation to the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes per day? Let’s Walk is changing that, uniting seniors with volunteers to walk the path to wellness together throughout Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties.

To guide them in their journey, Team TRIO’s projects focused on raising awareness and support for this mission. We began by developing monikers for program participants – senior walkers became “pathfinders,” and volunteers are now “path partners.” With these new identities, TRIO developed a newsletter template to help the nonprofit share important news and highlights. To help garner support and funding, our team also developed a slide deck to educate potential donors and participants on Let’s Walk’s impact, plus a matching leave-behind brochure.

Pet Helpers

Every pet deserves a loving home. As a nonprofit adoption center and spay/neuter clinic, Pet Helpers relies heavily on community support to keep costs low for its vital services. TRIO took action to help support year-end giving with a suite of GivingTuesday campaign assets.

To support the client’s annual “Treat a Pet to a Better Life!” GivingTuesday campaign, our team created a suite of creative assets. These custom pieces included a campaign implementation plan, a detailed day-of timeline, tailored eblasts, social media content, media relations assets and graphics to get the word out about Pet Helpers’ efforts.

She’s the Veteran

She’s the Veteran is dedicated to empowering female veterans by providing resources, camaraderie and support for their post-service lives. The organization builds a supportive network for women who have served, recognizing their unique needs and offering programs that help each veteran thrive.

For She’s the Veteran, TRIO created a set of branded Canva templates to elevate their social media presence. We also conducted a strategic planning session to guide their future initiatives and developed a brand standards guide to maintain consistent messaging. Additionally, we began managing their social media to build engagement and broaden their reach, ensuring their voice reaches the community they aim to support.

We’ve since extinguished our tiki torches and headed back to office desks! We can’t wait to see how our projects help boost these clients’ impact and are already preparing for next year’s event.

Special thanks to the food sponsors who helped keep the good vibes going through breakfast, lunch and dinner – Charleston Bagel, Kickin Chicken, Perfect Landscapes Inc. (donated Agaves Cantina), Cloud9 (donated Chick-fil-A), Benny Palmetto’s and Charleston Bay Gourmet.

For more information on CreateAthon or how to apply for next year’s pro bono marketing marathon, visit trio-solutions.com/CreateAthon.