Compass Health is Northwest Washington’s behavioral healthcare leader. Through comprehensive mental health treatment to crisis prevention and intervention, supportive housing, children’s and youth services, community education and much more, the non-profit organization serves more than 17,000 clients annually throughout Snohomish, Skagit, Island, San Juan, and Whatcom counties.

In 2017, Compass Health embarked on the largest capital project in its century-long history: transform an underutilized city block in Everett, Wash, into a state-of-the-art behavioral health campus with the scale and vision to address behavioral health, housing and other critical challenges regionwide. The Broadway Campus Redevelopment includes three phases, including a permanent supportive housing facility called Andy’s Place, an advanced center to house crisis triage and intensive behavioral health services, and a third building designed for integrated healthcare programs. From the beginning, we partnered with our client team to outline a multi-year, integrated communications strategy to:

• Foster widespread support for the project, ensuring everyone from city and county leaders to local neighborhood organizations and the business community understand the value it will deliver.
• Support public and private fundraising efforts including advocacy for federal, state and county funding, and planning and launch of a capital campaign.
• Use the project to further raise the profile of Compass Health and its leaders as innovators and leading voices region- and statewide.

F+A collaborates with Compass Health’s internal team and partners in political advocacy, real estate development and philanthropic development. Our collective work has consistently achieved communications goals and supported project success by:

• Media relations: Securing national Associated Press coverage, and leveraging milestones to ensure the project remains top-of-mind, including widespread coverage of project milestones, key funding wins, and more.
• Engagement: Using digital and analog channels to anticipate and address any potential concerns and drive positive engagement with community influencers.
• Events: Guiding messaging development and leading media and digital outreach for multiple in-person groundbreaking events and virtual town halls.
• Advocacy: Crafting messaging and packaging one-pagers for advocacy days and meetings with state and federal legislators.
• Fundraising: Partnering with Compass Health’s development team to brand and launch It’s Time: The Campaign for Compass Health.
• Thought Leadership: Expanding the platform of Compass Health’s CEO Tom Sebastian and other leaders through opportunities such as Seattle Business Magazine’s Executive Excellence Awards, Puget Sound Business Journal’s Health Care Leadership Awards, a TEDx talk, earned feature profiles, and more.