With TCCF, You Too Can Win The Cable Lottery!!!

Half a million dollar donation, half a million dollars!!! No that is not a typo, in the middle of recession announcements, bailout packages, and the reality that programmatic and staff cuts are here, we at Cable Positive are pleased to highlight the donation of $522, 350 in free airtime (or 10,477 spots) from Comcast to Legacy Community Health Services in Houston, Texas.

A Tony Cox Community Fund grantee Cycle 2 of 2008, Legacy Community Health Services received a $5,000 grant to produce a public education campaign entitled “Get Tested.” The project’s goals were to promote HIV awareness and HIV testing to the residents of Houston, Texas. The free HIV testing event promoted through Legacy’s public service announcement occurred on National HIV Testing Day and was promoted through advertisements in OutSmart magazine, Houston Style magazine, and the Houston Press; through posters and palm cards distributed throughout Houston; and through event information and a link on Legacy’s webpage and on their YouTube page, where the PSA was also available for viewing.

The “Get Tested” campaign shows different groups of people and asks the viewer what they have in common. The PSA featured representations of the target populations at highest risk of HIV/AIDS in Houston: a racially mixed group of men, a group of African American and Hispanic youth playing basketball, an older African American woman walking with groceries, and a young Latino couple. After showing all the different groups, the voiceover states that what the different groups have in common is that they may have HIV and they don’t know it. The PSA was so successful in getting the word out to the community about the National HIV Testing Day event that Legacy scheduled a second testing event for Sept. 20th at their satellite clinic in Houston’s predominately black neighborhood of Fifth Ward and the new information’s date and locale were tagged at the end of the “Get Tested” PSA. Unfortunately, the event had to be cancelled due to Hurricane Ike; which left Houston with massive power outages that lasted weeks.

The amazing community partnership that was developed and fostered between Comcast and Legacy Community Health Services is a prime example of the creative, innovative, and longstanding partnerships that can occur through the Tony Cox Community Fund grant. Think about Legacy and Comcast the next time a grant deadline comes around and you think, what can my agency do with $5,000? The answer would be A LOT!