Develop a 12-Month Substack Growth and Content Strategy

Posi Pos Music is a storytelling, arts, and public health initiative focused on HIV storytelling, poetry, photography, music, creative education, and community engagement. Our goal is to transform Substack into a sustainable hub for audience growth, reader engagement, program promotion, fundraising, and long-term community support.

We are especially interested in making our Substack clearer, more engaging, and easier for readers to act on. We want subscribers to understand who we are, why the work matters, and how they can support us through subscribing, sharing, donating, booking a workshop or performance, or staying connected to future projects.

The volunteer will work with us to create a 12-month Substack Strategic Growth and Content Plan that includes:

• An audit of our current Substack presence with recommendations for optimization
• A content calendar featuring recurring themes, categories, and a sustainable posting schedule
• A growth strategy for subscriber acquisition and engaging existing readers
• A CTA strategy that helps readers know how to donate, share, subscribe, book a workshop, or support Posi Pos Music
• Consent-based outreach recommendations for inviting previous contacts to subscribe
• A basic workflow recommendation for connecting Substack with our website and social media
• Recommendations for low-spoon tools or simple automations to manage the newsletter with limited administrative capacity
• Guidance on how to promote workshops, consulting, speaking, performances, fundraising needs, and long-term storytelling projects without overwhelming readers

By the end of this project, we will have a clear implementation guide that helps Posi Pos Music grow its audience, strengthen community engagement, promote our programs and services, and create sustainable pathways for donations, bookings, and long-term support while remaining grounded in our mission of healing, storytelling, and accountability.

We serve schools, colleges, nonprofits, government agencies, artists, and community organizations, with a focus on HIV awareness, disability justice, Black queer storytelling, survivor leadership, arts-based education, and community engagement.

The business has been operating for several years and is currently growing its earned income through workshops, consulting, speaking engagements, grants, and creative projects. This project will help us strengthen our communications strategy so we can reach more audiences, promote our offerings more clearly, and build sustainable support for our work.

We have already completed much of the foundational work needed to make this project successful. Posi Pos Music has an established website, an active Substack account, existing social media channels, and a growing body of content that includes poetry, photography, storytelling, public health education, workshop descriptions, project updates, and community engagement materials.

We have also clarified our core offerings, including workshops, performances, speaking engagements, consulting, grant support, and fundraising needs. This means the volunteer will not be starting from scratch. They will be helping us organize, strengthen, and create a clear strategy for the communications infrastructure we are already building.

To prepare for this project, we have gathered existing materials such as our website copy, Substack posts, workshop descriptions, service offerings, fundraising language, audience goals, and examples of the kinds of content we want to share more consistently. We are also prepared to provide links, background information, brand context, and access to relevant public-facing materials at the start of the project.

We are committed to being an engaged and responsive pro bono partner. We can meet regularly, provide feedback in a timely way, and implement recommendations after the project is complete. The final Substack Strategic Growth and Content Plan will be used to guide our newsletter schedule, improve our calls to action, grow our subscriber base, promote our workshops and services, and support donations and long-term community engagement.

Because Posi Pos Music is a small creative initiative with limited administrative capacity, we are especially prepared to use a strategy that is practical, realistic, and sustainable. We are looking for guidance that helps us stay consistent without overextending our capacity, and we are ready to turn the volunteer’s recommendations into a clear, manageable communications system.