Promoting Your Vacation Bible School: Working with the Local Press

By Ann Hammond McCamy

If you want to use your VBS to reach out to your community, there will have to be lots of promotion to ensure that visitors come to hear God’s message. There are two ways to get your message out through the media: publicity and advertising. What’s the difference? Publicity is free. Advertising costs money. Both are effective, but since publicity is free, it’s a good place to start.

To get publicity, you will need to send press releases to your local paper. Look at community notices they already publish to get a sense of the length and tone they usually accept. In a small community paper, there may be only one or two editors. To work with a large city paper where there are dozens of employees, you may need to cultivate a working relationship with someone in the newsroom, and send your releases directly to that person.

In the Director Planning Guide of your Lambert VBS kit, there is a sample press release you can edit to suit your needs. Add a contact number for your publicity person so if newspaper personnel have questions, they can reach you. Also add a phone number for the church building or for your VBS director in the body of the article so potential visitors can call if they have questions. If your congregation has prepared something especially newsworthy for VBS, be sure to include that in your release, also. A press release is journalism, not creative writing, so stick to items usually covered in journalistic articles: who, what, when, and where. The shorter and simpler your article, the greater the chance it will be published exactly as you submit it. If you are working with a small community newspaper, consider submitting a high-quality photo with your press release. Have several of your congregation’s children pose as they preview the materials and activities, and snap photos that show everyone’s face clearly. Include a caption that includes each child’s name. Hometown editors know that photos of kids sell papers, as parents buy extra copies!

If there are no small community newspapers in your area, getting publicity may be a little harder. You probably will not get a “hit” in the Boston Globe or the New York Times. But there is a little trick that may help you obtain publicity in slightly smaller newspapers. Contact an advertising salesperson and purchase an advertisement or a series of ads. Once you have established a relationship with an ad person, send a copy of every press release to that person as well as to the newsroom.

To get radio and television announcements, edit your press release down to the minimum information: congregation name and location, date and time. This shortened form is called a public service announcement, or PSA. Be sure your PSA includes a phone number to call for more information.

Keep in mind a few final tips: Assign one or two people to handle your press contacts, and be sure they coordinate their efforts to avoid duplications. Send your press releases out via mail or email about two weeks before you want them to appear. Send notices to all community papers and radio and TV stations in your area. Remember that the local press is not obligated to run your announcements. If you want to guarantee your material gets printed, purchase an advertisement. Finally, try to find out how visitors heard about your VBS. If they saw it in the local media, you will know your efforts were worthwhile!