Roughly a hundred thousand kitchen tables
$2.2B federal program across 27 states and territories. $1.4B awarded and 43,000+ applications submitted from Team Windsor outreach areas.
The Discrimination Financial Assistance Program was a $2.2 billion federal effort to make good on decades of documented harm to farmers and ranchers who had experienced discrimination in USDA lending. Every eligible producer in every one of the 50 states, plus Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, had to hear about it, understand it, and complete an application before the window closed.
The Windsor Group won the prime contract. We joined the team.
Federal outreach usually has one of two problems. Either the audience is easy to find and the message is generic, or the audience is scattered across geographies and demographics that no single channel reaches. DFAP was the second kind. Farmers and ranchers who had experienced discrimination in USDA lending were not sitting on a mailing list waiting to be contacted. They were spread across generations, languages, and a range of trust levels with the very agency now asking them to apply.
The brand had to feel official enough to be credible, warm enough to be approachable, and clear enough that someone reading it on a phone at a kitchen table understood what to do next. It had to work in English and Spanish, in print and on a phone screen, in a formal legal notice and on a social post.
Complete identity: logotype, color, typography, iconography, application walkthroughs, plain-language explainers, form design, translated collateral, and a full library of social and digital creative. Every asset was made to be reused across state agencies, community partners, and cooperating nonprofits, because the outreach model relied on trusted local voices carrying the same message the federal program was sending.
Postcard mailer, roughly a hundred thousand pieces, into program-eligible geographies. A postcard costs more than a targeted ad. It also lands in a physical place, on a kitchen table, at a time the recipient chooses. For an audience trained to be cautious with digital government communications, that physicality matters.
Printed application materials. Site experience for producers who found their way online. Collateral for the case workers who had to help applicants complete forms.
There was no ad line in the USDA contract. Windsor carved budget out of their own so a paid campaign could run at all. We spent it on hyper-targeted LinkedIn against occupational, geographic, and demographic segments that mapped to the eligibility criteria, and layered Google search on the highest-intent queries.
The creative and the targeting did their job. Applications kept coming in.
The original application deadline was October 31, 2023. USDA extended it to January 13, 2024 to give more producers a chance to apply. When a winter storm shut down access to submission tools that final weekend, USDA moved the deadline again to Wednesday, January 17.
Our team turned around updated outreach on short notice each time, because the point was never to hit a milestone. The point was to make sure every eligible person had a real chance to be counted.
Those are the numbers that appear in reporting. The number that matters more, and does not appear in a chart, is that people who had been effectively locked out of a federal program for decades were contacted, informed in a way they could act on, and made whole where the government had recognized harm. That is what the work was for.
72% of the total $2.2B awarded to applicants in Team Windsor territory.
Every eligible geography, every eligible producer, one campaign to reach them.
Share of total applications sourced from Team Windsor outreach areas.
All 27 states in scope, plus Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Identity system, print + digital foundations, translations pipeline, partner asset library.
Postcard mailer to roughly 100,000 households. Hyper-targeted LinkedIn plus Google search in-market. Cooperators rolling out consistent materials in multiple languages. Original October 31 deadline in view.
USDA moves the deadline to January 13. Outreach updated in every channel, framed as the program keeping its word.
"Final Days" creative rolls out. Winter storm knocks out submission tools; USDA extends again to Wednesday, January 17. MB turns around updated outreach in hours.
43,000+ applications submitted. $1.4B distributed. 78% of applications sourced from Team Windsor outreach areas.
Thirty-minute intro call with Mark. No slide deck, no pitch.
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