SJMC Partners with Milwaukee Diaper Mission to Provide Students with Real-World Experience

Students in Distinguished Teaching Faculty member Deb Pierce’s J463: Digital Media Strategies class developed a website as well as marketing and promotional campaigns for the Milwaukee diaper Mission, a Milwaukee-based nonprofit that provides families with free diapers and period supplies.

It is not often that students have the opportunity to gain real-world experience in a classroom setting. The School of Journalism and Mass Communication makes this opportunity possible through 400-level courses that partner students with real clients and businesses in Wisconsin.

Distinguished Teaching Faculty Debra Pierce connected her students with the non-profit Milwaukee Diaper Mission (MDM) through her course J463: Digital Media Strategies. This partnership gave students hands-on experience in non-profit marketing as students created a digital media campaign for MDM this semester.

MDM is a basic needs bank that provides families with free diapers and period supplies. The organization’s goal is to end diaper need and period poverty in Milwaukee. 1 in 2 U.S. families experience diaper need, which is an inadequate supply of diapers to keep a child healthy. Period poverty, the inability to purchase period products due to income barriers, affects 1 in 4 people.

MDM started helping families in 2020, after Founder and Executive Director Meagan Johnson learned about the commonality of diaper need and that Milwaukee was one of the only major U.S. cities without a diaper bank. Since opening, the organization has distributed over two million diapers to Milwaukee locals.

“I was incredibly inspired by the stories I was hearing from other diaper bank founders and leaders around the country and how much impact they were making in their local communities. That really motivated me to get this organization off the ground,” Johnson said. “The need has risen significantly since I started this organization. It really is a testament to the fact that we need to exist. We should have existed a long time ago, and we’re making a huge impact for families here in our area.”

At the beginning of the semester, the J463 students were divided into three agencies in which they collaborated to develop their own campaigns to achieve MDM’s goals.

“Students get valuable skills and a project on their resume that helps them get interviews and jobs, while the Milwaukee Diaper Mission will ultimately be able to serve more families in need,” Pierce said. “UW-Madison continues its ‘Wisconsin Idea’ promise, that is, to give back to the great State of Wisconsin to nonprofit organizations like the mission, with the valuable resource of our students’ time and talents.”

Pierce designed the course around a mix of learning objectives and the client’s needs. This semester each agency redesigned MDM’s website and created their own integrated social media plan, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) and content strategy. Halfway through the semester, the agencies met with Johnson to pitch their ideas and receive feedback.

“Students are getting a true capstone experience in this class – they are attacking this project just like a real digital agency would…conducting research to get to know the client’s brand, business and consumer, then designing objectives, strategies and tactics to achieve the Milwaukee Diaper Mission’s goals,” Pierce said.

This semester, Pierce, alongside the SJMC’s System Engineer Sterling Anderson and DoIt’s Service Leader for Software Training for Students Pete Valeo, implemented a new software for students to redesign MDM’s website. The three teamed up to create separate websites via SquareSpace for each agency group to revamp. The websites were vital to the success of the students’ campaigns, as Pierce believes a website is “the center point of any digital marketing campaign.” At the end of the semester, Johnson plans to use one of the SquareSpace websites for her organization.

Over the course of the semester, the learning experience was mutual between Johnson and the students.

“For the first half of our existence, it was just me, I didn’t have any other staff to lean on for building our website or trying to build our social media following,” Johnson said. “The benefit to students is getting experience working with a real client but also being able to collaborate with somebody who is learning as I go myself. It’s been very inspiring for me to watch these young students with all of these ideas and passion be able to present to me, and run with these ideas into the future and put them toward the work that we do.”

Pitching to a real-world client gives students the opportunity to experience the pressure, emotions and preparation needed to work on a campaign for a real business.

SJMC senior Elisabeth Charney felt a mix of emotions the day of the presentations with Johnson.

“[I felt] definitely enthusiastic, a little nervous, but also excited to show her all [the work] and see what she had to say,” Charney said. “Her feedback ended up being really good, and we had a really good conversation with her.”

A student on a different agency team, junior Amari Mbongwo, reiterated similar feelings regarding the pitch presentations.

“I think it was a really great experience,” Mbongwo said. “Meagan is so lovely, she’s been really great to work with so I think that helped a lot as well. It was nerve wracking, but it was really cool to see how much work my group had put into it and come together with some really cool insights.”

Johnson was impressed by the students’ work at the pitch meeting and is eager to see what they accomplish by the end of the semester.

“The students enthusiasm, jumping on board with this project and asking very thoughtful questions, going above and beyond, and probably spending more time and energy on some of the aspects of these projects than I was expecting they would, and maybe they were even expecting they would, has been really fun and such an incredible opportunity for a small nonprofit,” Johnson said. “I am really, really excited to see the final projects and see what we can implement into the future.”

The two students agreed, this course aligns perfectly with the things they are learning and experiencing in their internships this semester. The skills taught in the course were transferable to the work they were doing during the class and would be doing in the future careers.

When Pierce chose MDM to work with this semester, she hoped students would gain a deeper understanding of hygiene poverty. Students made an impact on an important issue in the state while learning how to work through the entirety of the campaign process.

“It’s been really cool to learn about a nonprofit that is for diapers and period products, because I’ve never experienced period poverty or diaper need myself,” Charney said. “Getting to learn about that and see that it’s a really common issue is really cool, and something that will definitely change my perspective.”

This course is unique from others in the SJMC because of the structure. Students had the ability to divide work amongst themselves to strengthen the skills they choose. Most classes assign roles and responsibilities but Pierce’s course does not have specific roles within the agencies which allows students to explore positions based on their interests and strengths.

Working in a “real life” setting along with the structure of the course gave the students the opportunity to see the areas of strategic communication in which they want to build a career. Being exposed to many different responsibilities and tasks showed students what they enjoy, excel at and are interested in for the future.

“There’s not a lot of times you’re going to get a chance to pitch to a real client and have them actually work with you through the entire process,” Mbongwo said. “That’s what makes this class special. It’s been eye-opening to see my strengths in strat comm fields, areas I can improve on looking into the workforce and being able to a future employer, ‘I worked on a real campaign for a real client.’”