Enhancing Outreach - A Toolkit for Increasing College Students’ Use of Basic Needs Services

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Bintang

A practical toolkit that explains why basic needs insecurity limits college students’ use of crucial food, housing, and support services, and how enhanced outreach can close that gap. It outlines the national and Washington-specific prevalence of food insecurity and homelessness, identifies common barriers like low awareness and uncertainty about eligibility, and introduces tailored communication approaches using student identity and needs through text, email, and learning platforms. It also provides a sample outreach message and a five-step implementation and impact-analysis process.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages13

Reading Time33 min

AccessFree to download

Enhancing outreach: An overview

Basic needs insecurity landscape

What is enhanced outreach for college students?

Sample message

Enhancing outreach: A step-by-step guide

Step 1: Define the goals of your enhanced outreach campaign

Step 2: Identify platforms for communication

Step 3: Design your outreach message

Step 4: Identify outreach frequency and timing

Step 5: Conduct enhanced outreach impact analysis and refine your outreach

Enhancing Outreach A Toolkit for Increasing College Students’ Use of Basic Needs Services Developed by Education Northwest and the Washington Student Achievement Council Enhancing outreach: An overview Basic needs insecurity landscape According to the most recently available national data, nearly a quarter (23 percent) of undergraduate students in the United States experience food insecurity at some point during their postsecondary education, while 8 percent experience homelessness.1 State surveys have also found high rates of basic needs insecurity across their public postsecondary institutions. In Washington State, for example, 52 percent of students attending public postsecondary institutions experienced basic needs insecurity in 2024—an increase of 6 percent since 2022.2 Meanwhile, many of the services and resources that exist to meet the needs of these students go unused. For example, about half of the undergraduate students in Washington state who were experiencing basic needs insecurity in 2024 did not access available resources: • 47 percent did not access public benefits, and • 59 percent did not access the basic needs resources available on campus. There are many reasons for this, including insufficient information about eligibility, lack of awareness, and uncertainty about the process of obtaining help. To solve these challenges, enhanced outreach has emerged as a potential strategy to help students access public benefits and campus basic needs resources, thereby improving students’well-being and increasing their chances of earning a degree or a credential, including in STEM fields. 1 National Center for Education Statistics. (2020) . National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) [Data set] . U.S. Department of Education. [https://nces.ed.gov/datalab/powerstats/157-na](https://nces.ed.gov/datalab/powerstats/157-na)tional-postsecondary-student-aid-study-2020-undergraduate-students 2 Washington Student Achievement Council. (2025) . Reassessing basic needs security among Washington college students. Washington Student Achievement Council. [https://wsac.wa.gov/](https://wsac.wa.gov/)[ ](https://wsac.wa.gov/)[sites/default/files/2025.BasicNeedsReport.pdf](sites/default/files/2025.BasicNeedsReport.pdf) What is enhanced outreach for college students? Enhanced outreach is a strategic communication approach that uses a student’s name, identity, or needs to send tailored messages through channels like text, email, or learning management systems. Unlike mass messaging, such as flyers and mass emails, enhanced outreach strategies aim to boost relevance and connection—especially for underserved student groups with high basic needs insecurity or low resource use. While these campaigns can still reach a broad student audience, their language and visuals can be customized to engage key populations who are most in need, such as parenting students.3 This toolkit offers guidance on how to implement efficient, engaging, and effective enhanced outreach to students. It includes both messaging strategies and ways to analyze the results of your messaging to determine what’s working and what isn’t. By following the guidance in this toolkit, you’ll learn how to craft messages and analyze engagement data to identify and fill in gaps in engagement and resource uptake. This process will help refine your strategy for reaching more students and ensuring they have access to essential needs and support services, which ultimately supports their academic success. Below, we provide a fictional example of how an email message might look after enhancing your outreach. Then, we use this basic example to illustrate five steps for launching and continuously improving your enhanced outreach campaign: 1. Define the goals of your outreach campaign 2. Identify platforms for communication 3. Design your outreach messages 4. Identify outreach frequency and timing 5. Conduct enhanced outreach impact analysis and refine o

FAQs

Why do many college students not use basic needs services even when resources exist?

Common reasons include insufficient information about eligibility, lack of awareness, and uncertainty about the process for obtaining help.

What is enhanced outreach for college students?

It is a strategic communication approach that uses a student’s name, identity, or needs to send tailored messages through channels such as text, email, or learning management systems.

What are the five steps to launch and improve an enhanced outreach campaign?

The toolkit recommends: define outreach goals, identify communication platforms, design outreach messages, set outreach frequency and timing, and conduct impact analysis to refine the campaign.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Bintang