Coordinating Outreach for Emergency Rental Assistance Program

WITH COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN

Grant coordination and design for resident outreach.

In early 2022, Wayne County faced a federal deadline to distribute nearly $10 million in Emergency Rental Assistance to residents behind on rent and utilities. The Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan provided grant support to a group of local nonprofits to conduct rapid outreach and promote the program amongst residents. The Work Department provided grant management and design support, ensuring communication across community organizations, media partners, and the County, and creating multi-lingual promotional materials to reach residents.

Community outreach flyer with blue background and white and orange text, showing people wearing face masks, promoting emergency assistance for rent payments in Wayne County, Michigan, including contact information and a QR code.
Flyer for Wayne County Emergency Rental Assistance, with photo of a man and girl wearing masks talking outside a building.
Flyer with a photo of a man and girl wearing masks, engaging in conversation outside a building. The flyer promotes rental assistance from Wayne County, with instructions in Bengali.
A flyer for rental assistance in Wayne County, Michigan, featuring a photo of a man talking to a young girl wearing a mask and a woman in the background, also wearing a mask.

Our team helped identify local grantees and media outlets based on their connections to seven target communities: Ecorse, Hamtramck, Harper Woods, Highland Park, Inkster, Melvindale, and River Rouge. We managed the grantmaking process alongside Community Foundation staff, including working directly with each grantee to track implementation and collect final reports.

Throughout the campaign, we met with nonprofit partners, Wayne County departments, and the County’s marketing consultant. These meetings helped align messaging, resolve common issues, and inform updates to the County’s website and outreach materials.

The Work Department designed outreach materials in English, Arabic, Bangla, and Spanish. Materials included:

  • Multilingual flyers, outreach cards, and social graphics

  • A 6x9 postcard mailer

  • Ad assets for digital, print, and radio

  • Branded content for a livestream town hall produced by DPTV

Applications increased significantly during the campaign, rising from 106 per week in January to 355 per week by mid-March. By the March 31 deadline, Wayne County had received 4,574 applications and met its $9.8 million spend-down target.

Local organizations played a critical role in reaching residents:

  • Starfish Family Services assisted over 100 households and continued providing in-person support after the formal outreach period ended.

  • Helping Hut reached more than 7,500 people in Hamtramck through flyers, multilingual materials, and weekly application support.

  • The Family Center reached 2,200 residents through social media, email, and a citywide newsletter.

  • Outlier Media delivered ERAP information to 35,000 subscribers through text messages and newsletter stories.

  • DPTV and WDET promoted the program through livestream events and radio ads, reaching audiences of more than 10,000 and 45,000 respectively.

This project showed how coordinated outreach—rooted in community relationships, language access, and real-time feedback—can increase visibility and improve access to public resources in a short timeframe.