The National Cultural Alliance (NCA) is the embodiment of a movement within a vast and richly diverse arts and humanities community to ensure that the value and relevance of the arts and humanities remains essential to America's common moral assumptions. The organization has spent more than two years identifying the challenges which motivated the founding organizations to come together and grappling with organizational and philosophical concerns. Now, NCA is poised to launch the national initiative it hopes will positively alter attitudes and evoke changes in the behavior of the American public.

The organization has hired Ruder-Finn to create a comprehensive communications strategy that will serve as the road map for the next three to five years. If we look at this strategy as the script for a play about to be performed or the vision and plan for an exhibition, we can understand our expectations -- yours, as the National Cultural Alliance and ours as a member of your team.

Those expectations might be summarized as believing: that our audience's understanding of our message will move them to improve their way of living in today's world; that we, as the playwrights, authors, actors, historians, stage hands, scholars, theatre owners, ticket sellers (etc, etc, etc) will work together to bring our message repeatedly to ever-increasing audiences; and that the mere fact of the performance or exhibition itself and the success inherent in carrying it out, will continue to unify our disparate voices in our message, motivate our continued involvement and satisfy us at the deepest and most meaningful levels of our being. (p. 2)

CONTENTS
Introduction.

Communications strategy goal.
     Overall goal of the NCA communications strategy.
     Situation analysis.
     Analysis of the communications situation facing the National Cultural Alliance.
     The Givens.
     About the arts and humanities.
          Vast resource, vast economic impact.
          An industry that has changed and is changing.
          An industry paralyzed.
     About the National Cultural Alliance.
          A coalition of membership and service organizations.
          A new organization.
          A huge challenge.
     About the initiative: the big idea.
     About the overall communications environment.

Observations and perceptions.
     Strengths and selling points.
     Vision.
     Resources.
     Unique alliance.
     Research and understanding of the audience.
     History of change.
     Understanding of communications.
     The hope within your message.
     Weaknesses and barriers to effective communications.
     Coalition fragility.
     External target audience.
     Access to dollars.
     Message.

Conclusions.
     Message.
     Audiences.
     Campaign objectives by audiences.
     Internal.
     Financial supporters.
     Media.
     General Financial supporters.
     Media.
     General public.

Recommendations.
     Preparation.
     Internal communications:
          Enrolling NCA board and constituent boards.
          Enrolling constituent organizations memberships.
     External communications:
          Enrolling the funding community. 
          Media relations.

The National Cultural Alliance (NCA) is a coalition of 45 national humanities and arts organizations representing 23,000 cultural institutions in the U.S. Founded in 1990 by nine arts and humanities service organizations, NCA has initiated a multi-year public awareness campaign targeted to the general public, The arts and humanities.