The West Delaware County Community School District (West Delaware CCSD) is based in Manchester, Iowa and serves the communities of Dundee, Greeley, Manchester, Masonville, and Ryan. The district operates three schools, all in Manchester.

The school district ranks among the top in the state of Iowa. They have award winning arts and athletics programs and offer unique programs such as Delta V coding school, apprenticeship programs to HS seniors, and a pre-school. They are the only school district that offers e-Sports (partnering with Hawkeye Community College on this endeavor).

The community is supportive of the school district. Most of the involvement comes from parents and businesses in Manchester. Despite the accolades the West Delaware CCSD has received, students are leaving during open enrollment. Open Enrollment is the process by which parents/guardians residing in an Iowa district may enroll their children into another Iowa school district under the terms and conditions of Iowa Code section 282.18 and 281–Iowa Administrative Code 17.

When parents opt for open enrollment, the result is a loss of funding to the district. West Delaware CCSD superintendent Dr. Kristen Rickey has done some informal research to better understand the reasons why parents decide to enroll their child in a different school district. Dr. Rickey has data of where people are going in open enrollment. The data needs to be analyzed for key insights and implications as part of the research into getting at the root causes for why parents are opting for open enrollment. The district feels they need a marketing communication plan to increase the publicâ€s awareness of all the great things the school district offers.

In order to better understand and address this issue, marketing students used existing data and additionally surveyed families within the district and those that have open enrolled out of the district. The team used this information and other best practices to create a public relations and marketing communication plan to increase the publicâ€s knowledge and awareness of all the things the school district offers. The marketing team also provided an implementation plan to help West Delaware CCSD manage the recommendations.

As part of its 2020-2025 Strategic Plan, the Waterloo Public Library wants to increase its outreach to the business community. This includes start-ups and established businesses. The library and its staff offer a variety of services and resources for businesses including assistance with secondary research, training on how to use social media, and meeting / conference rooms that can be used free of charge. The library wants to be viewed as more than a place to check-out books. They want local businesses to view them as an extension of their organizations.

Marketing student teams created public relations and marketing campaigns to generate awareness among the business community of the libraryâ€s services.

The Marketing Institute teams will competed against each other to pitch their campaign idea, with the winning team selected by the libraryâ€s staff.

Three years ago, Hamilton, Boone, and Webster Counties received funding from Iowaâ€s Parks Foundation to develop a master plan as a region focused on achieving economic, social and natural resources balance and improvements.

The Boone Forks Parks to People planning team involves collaborators from the state, county and local government, non- profit organizations and private sector economic leaders to build a robust regional approach for the future. Now that the plan is complete, the next step is to start promoting the Boone Forks region. State level funding has disappeared for these initiatives, but the three counties all believe that the vision is still worth pursuing by other means.

The goal of the project was to create a marketing plan and branding strategy to promote the Boone Forks area to the residents Hamilton, Boone and Webster counties. The Boone Forks area offers many opportunities for outdoor activities such as hiking, bike trails, and so on. In addition, there is an opportunity to increase the awareness of environmental education and the importance of protecting the Boone River.

Maquoketa (pop. 6,112) underwent a major transformation that stemmed from goals set during the Vision 2020 process in 2013-14, a community-wide strategic planning process with extensive public input and data analysis. The three major goals identified included: 1) Downtown Revitalization; 2) Recreation, Arts and Tourism; and 3) Retaining and Attracting Business and Professionals. Since then, the community has undertaken several major projects and initiatives that improve the environment and celebrate the communityâ€s cultural and natural assets. Maquoketa wanted to build on this momentum to increase tourism to the city. Its location is ideally suited for weekend trips for individuals and families to enjoy the many attractions the city offers.

As part of its revitalization program, the city needed a marketing communication plan that would pave the path to increase tourism through the marketing of the city and its many attractions. The marketing communication plan developed by the students included new branding for the city and the process to implement the tactics of the plan by the civic and government stakeholders. The Marketing Institute team worked alongside a stakeholder committee that would be comprised of local civic and government leaders. The team pulled everything together in a communication plan that recommended marketing tactics to increase tourism (while also increasing internal and external positive perceptions of Maquoketa), as well as brand implementation.