Case Study
Fédération culturelle canadienne-française
The Fédération culturelle canadienne-française (FCCF) is a national organization based in Ottawa whose mandate is to represent, defend and promote Canada’s Acadian and Francophone cultural sector. Founded over 40 years ago, the association speaks on behalf of its 21 members – all of whom are organizations of provincial, territorial or national scope – and of their own members.
La bande numérique, launched in 2022 with funding from Canadian Heritage, is one of many initiatives spearheaded by the FCCF for the benefit of its members and the cultural sector as a whole.
The Storyteller has acted as a digital advisor to the project since its launch.
Background
La bande numérique is an initiative aimed at supporting representatives of the Francophone arts and culture community evolving in a minority setting with their digital adoption, notably through a digital transformation coaching path offered to FCCF members and their respective members. In the wake of the pandemic, it became apparent that cultural organizations needed to accelerate digital appropriation to become more efficient and adapt to the new realities of the communities they serve.
Launched in the winter of 2022 in beta form, La bande numérique has since undergone several iterations to better adapt to community needs and on-the-ground realities. Nevertheless, the project’s fundamentals remain the same today. Following registration, organizations embark on a process lasting a minimum of one year, which begins with the administration of an extensive self-assessment of their digital knowledge and practices in terms of communications, administration and management, and digital thinking. This is followed by a more exhaustive analysis process with the digital advisor, who then develops a customized action plan for the organization. Once the action plan has been drawn up, monthly meetings are held to help the organization move forward with its implementation. Specialists from a variety of backgrounds are assigned as needed, and a well-stocked training calendar covering topics of interest is also made available to organizations throughout their journey.
The Storyteller has been working on this project since August 2022, with the mandate to support, advise and train participating organizations.
Mandate
As part of its digital advisor mandate, The Storyteller is assigned several organizations each year to accompany them along their journey. In the past, the digital advisor would lead group workshops at the beginning of the program to ensure consistency in the participants’ knowledge, though this component was eventually abandoned in favor of individual coaching.
To ensure the success of these accompaniments, it is essential to establish a bond of trust, which is built up over time, little by little. While many organizations wish to be advised on their digital communication strategies and tools, we also provide support, ideas and advice on other digital topics, from project management and collaboration to data collection, security and confidentiality, innovation and digital sustainability.
In addition to the more general support we provide as a digital advisor, The Storyteller is also called upon to act as a communications consultant for numerous organizations. Many mandates that we are attributed relate to the development of communications plans and strategies, but we are also called upon to support organizations with their editorial and content strategies, newsletters, social media presence, websites, fundraising campaigns, and so on.
To date, nearly a dozen training sessions and discussions on various communications topics have been offered by The Storyteller to the greater Bande numérique community, made up of program participants, FCCF members and cultural organizations from across Canada. Workshops are promoted on Eventbrite and social media and open to all, space permitting.
Outcomes
For The Storyteller, it’s important to fully understand the realities, needs and capacity of each organization to develop an action plan that will be both useful and realistic, and to which the organization can continue to refer once the program is completed, so that it can pursue its journey independently. As a result, several participants have testified to the quality of the coaching and action plan they received, and intend to pursue their post-participation digital adoption efforts based on our recommendations.
Since 2022, we have supported on a regular basis more than twenty organizations participating in La bande numérique, in addition to serving 25 organizations through our communications consulting service, whether for one or two meetings or as part of longer-term projects. This has enabled several program participants to develop a formal communications plan, improve the impact of their online communications, dare to make a few adjustments to their existing strategy, or simply gain confidence in taking on responsibilities for which they don’t always have the expertise due to the resources available and the scope of the work involved.
The training and facilitated conversation sessions we have offered to the Bande numérique community also seem to have contributed to raising awareness on certain communications issues and reinforced or consolidated knowledge, skills and practices relating to various communications topics, such as digital writing, social media, sustainable communications, websites, communications strategies and newsletters. Surveys carried out by the FCCF following each training have shown an excellent satisfaction rate among participants.
Our two cents
The Storyteller works with a number of associations and groups wishing to offer assistance, coaching and training to their members and the companies and organizations they represent. It’s a win-win-win formula: the association offers a sought-after, valued and useful service to its members, who benefit from free or low-cost consulting, while The Storyteller takes advantage of the long-term nature of the mandate to deepen its knowledge of the organization and its industry, enabling it to offer even greater value along the way.
