SourceAmerica, an AbilityOne authorized enterprise, helps create jobs for people with disabilities. Through a two-tiered national design challenge, high school and college student teams work with one of SourceAmerica’s 550 nonprofit agency partners across the country to design assistive technologies that help workers with disabilities work more effectively and perform job tasks they otherwise couldn’t do.

Our first-year “hurry-up” media outreach for the design challenge yielded feature stories in finalists’ hometown outlets and regional coverage of the Washington, DC winners’ ceremonies. Brought on earlier in the process the following year, JR Communications developed a deeper program. Localized pitches to campus and hometown print and broadcast outlets yielded pre- and post-event coverage in major papers, on network morning shows and news broadcasts, and in hometown papers that featured not only the finalists and their schools but also the nonprofit partners and the workers with disabilities who benefited from the students’ inventions.

JR Communications was also retained as communications advisor for SourceAmerica’s DC-based grassroots conference.