2024 Cooperative Communicators Virtual Workshop

Welcome/Opening Remarks

Dan Smith, President/CEO, Cooperative Network

Developing an Integrated Communications Plan

Amy Eckelberg, Executive Director of Public Relations, Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation
In today’s world, communication is no easy feat. With multiple preferences of communication and an ever-changing rhetoric, how do you break through to your members or customers? Being diversified in your communication efforts is important, but also can be overwhelming with limited resources. We will dive into how to build an integrated communications plan and how to complement your efforts to get the most ROI.

News Gathering & Writing: ‘It’s Okay to Think Outside of the Box’

Rick Hummell, Communications Specialist, Cooperative Network
Cooperative Network communications specialist and veteran journalist Rick Hummell will share some news writing tips and a few anecdotes from his career as a newspaper reporter, editor, and managing editor. During his tenure as managing editor of a group of four newspapers, the publications earned dozens of awards from the Wisconsin Newspaper Association and Hummell received numerous Best in State awards in many categories including Front Pages, Editorials, Special Sections, Feature Writing, and Sports Feature Writing.

BREAK

Reducing the Stigma: Let’s Talk About Farmer Mental Health

Jeff Ditzenberger, founder, TUGS (Talking, Understanding, Growing and Supporting)
In recent years, rural America has come face to face with a farmer mental health crisis. Jeff Ditzenberger, a former crop grower from Wisconsin, uses his past struggles with suicide to help others today. The founder of TUGS (Talking, Understanding, Growing and Supporting), he travels around the country delivering his outspoken message: “It’s okay to not be okay.” Ditzenberger features prominently in two recent farmer mental health documentaries, PBS’s “Greener Pastures” and Rural Minds’ “Rural America is Having a Mental Health Crisis, This Farmer is Fighting It.”

Success for Reading Program & Local Co-op News Pages

Liz Gunderson, Communications Coordinator, Pierce Pepin Cooperative Services
Pierce Pepin Cooperative Services (PPCS) communications coordinator Liz Gunderson led efforts to establish the co-op as an affiliate of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, a national reading program for which PPCS sponsors books for nearly 1,000 local children. Earlier this year, the Wisconsin Legislature created a grant program to reimburse cooperatives and other nonprofits for 50 percent of the cost of providing books for the program.

That success came on the heels of PPCS receiving the 2023 N.F. Leifer Memorial Journalism Award, bestowed upon the Wisconsin electric cooperative adjudged to have the strongest overall local pages in the Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News over the previous year. Gunderson is the co-op’s local pages editor.

Webinar conclusion