Centers for Independent Living, like People with Disabilities, face barriers to achieve their goals. CILs don’t have proper access to marketing. But marketing enables CILs to advocate for their CILs.
As Centers for Independent Living are usually the best-kept secret in their communities, this keeps them from impacting their consumers’ goals to achieve greater independence in their lives. This is due to two main reasons.
First, CILs also aren’t usually well-versed in Marketing so they can lack the expertise to know how to go from being the best-kept secret to the best known.
Secondly, there’s the issue of having funding for marketing. CILs either haven’t ever allocated funding to marketing or they have very meager budgets for marketing. So CILs approach a marketing agency or freelancer and find, not only do they not understand the culture of People with Disabilities nor the philosophy of Independent Living, but the costs are way outside the CIL’s budget.
So the Center for Independent Living usually hires the more affordable solution of a marketing freelancer which usually results in marketing efforts that are uncoordinated, not guided by a marketing strategy, and incohesive branding. It’s a big problem. Add your ideas in the comments below regarding what you think would solve this.
If you’re part of a Center for Independent Living, State Plan for Independent Living, or other entity for Independent Living, Aprosae invites you to join our advisory committee to provide feedback on what marketing solutions would work best for Centers for Independent Living. Please let us know of your interest!