On October 23rd, we came together as a community at Georgetown University to answer George Casey’s call to action to engage our youth and solve America’s recruiting challenge. In doing so, we are similarly called to create Military Thriving™ communities across America in 2025.

We engaged in innovative breakout sessions and took the first step in creating actionable plans and a blueprint for community wide engagements that will help us achieve the goal we set at Georgetown. 

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KEY THEMES: Increase awareness of positive aspects; Drive maximum engagement through collaboration and measure both through short term outputs [attendance, message growth over time] and direct outcome measurements [surveys, recruiter visits]

• Awareness [in our case awareness of military careers] as measured by recruiter visits, attendance, growth of both over time, social media engagement
• Shift in Perception as measured by surveys, referrals and growth of movement [in our case visits and referrals to recruiters, increased local messaging about mil careers]
• Collaboration between all stakeholders
• Reinforcement of core values of military—whether through military service or adjacent industries

PLANNING CONSIDERATIONS:
The group consensus was that it is unrealistic to assume we will shift the overall objective [better recruiting numbers] in a short period. In order to hold ourselves accountable and ensure we are on the right path, we should instead measure leading indicators of success, which are primarily connected to attendance and sentiment by young people. This can be measured by attendance at events, growing attendance at repeat events, and surveys of attendees to measure sentiment toward the military and perceptions of veterans. Mid-range, increased activity at recruiting offices post-event over time is also a potential indicator of success if our markets perform better than non-event markets.

KEY THEMES: Money [corporate B2B, nonprofit funding]; People [corporate recruiting, nonprofit members]; Brand [Goodwill, customers]

PLANNING CONSIDERATIONS: 
Successful events depend on incentivizing the right stakeholders to join and engage in large numbers.  Therefore, it is important to remember and consider the desired business outcomes for each stakeholder group involved. Businesses large and small are motivated by increasing their customer base, recruiting and favorable branding. National businesses could have opportunities for B2B development in target markets. Nonprofits want members and funders. Communities are looking for citizen engagement, cohesion and goodwill, as well as an attractive ‘brand’ to help grow their tax base. All of these factors should be not only considered, but proactively explored and accommodated while planning events

KEY THEMES: Resources, Access to audience, Knowledge of local markets and audience including policies

• Misunderstanding of effective communication channels and messaging to young people
• Access to audience [in our case, youth] in local markets
• Lack of knowledge of local markets—influencers, local orgs, decision makers in govt, etc.
• Lack of collaboration between organizations
• Resource constraints
• Policy constraints [national or local]

PLANNING CONSIDERATIONS: 

Communication: Perhaps the largest barrier to our overall objective is the challenge in reaching young people where they communicate, in a language that speaks to them. Compounding that challenge is a potential lack of knowledge about the local market—both the positive and negative aspects that intersect with our events and objectives. Research will be necessary and ongoing to overcome these challenges in each market, and nationally. Everything from stakeholders, outreach, venue, activities and messaging must fit the audience [young people] and the local markets.

Resources: The second key barrier relates to properly resourcing events. All participants must give money, time or talent. Multiple, sometimes competing organizations, must work together in situations where normally they could be trying to ‘win’ [companies recruiting for the same talent; nonprofits competing for funding]. A successful plan will anticipate these challenges and fashion tactics that make the events a “win-win-win” for all stakeholders involved. 

KEY THEMES: Leverage local knowledge and stakeholders; Research our audience and seek out relevant influencers; Authentic messaging is key!

• Leverage force-multipliers like influencers, social media to meet audience where they are
• Include local stakeholders—seek national hubs where possible
• Include national stakeholders for resources and ‘loud’ messaging
• Ensure messaging is authentic, transparent and targeted to audience [in our case, young people] by researching and creating ‘customer profile’
• Incentivize engagement
• Share inspirational stories through the participants [authentic]
• Diversify messaging to suit local/specific audiences
• Engage all stakeholders through a centralized planner
• Use local stakeholders to develop and customize the message

KEY THEMES: Find the WIFM for audience and Debunk Myths

• WIFM for audience [in this case young people—“you will be cared for and inherit a community who will support you”]
• Debunk competing narratives [in this case, veterans are broken] with positive messages from authentic stakeholders [in our case veterans]
• Redefine ‘service’ to include adjacent industries and organizations
• Frame goal/outcome as serving a larger purpose
• Demystify/debunk myths directly

PLANNING CONSIDERATIONS:

Myth Debunking: It will be critical to counteract both myths and truths about the challenges of military life, in order to attract more young people. We firmly believe that the best way to do this is to 1. Acknowledge that military life is challenging, but assert that the challenges are offset by the sense of purpose and the tremendous community that one inherits when they join; 2. Show—not tell—young people what that purpose and community does for veterans. When young people see successful, thriving veterans in their communities, taking time out to help them, they will see how military service contributes to a more successful life.  

WIFM: Veterans can show by example what military life can do for young people, by showing them the positive results of military service—their own thriving community. In addition, we can show them the facts—veteran families have less poverty and higher incomes than civilian families, as just-released research from RAND shows. Most importantly the message must be given authentically. Attempts to pander to young people, or cover up challenges of military life, will be sniffed out immediately. Emphasizing that some of the challenges, like the physical ones, make a person stronger will be more successful