Historic Westside Gardens — Follow-Up Sequence

Target: Historic Westside Gardens — 380 Elm St NW, Atlanta GA 30314 (Westside/Vine City) — founder-led nonprofit turning vacant Westside lots into food since 2010

Contact: Rosario Hernandez, Executive Director & Founder (primary); Khari Diop, Director Programs & Personnel (alternate)

Channel(s): Instagram DM @historic_westside_gardens (primary — no published email or phone). Facebook DM facebook.com/HistoricWestsideGarden (fallback). Website volunteer form at historicwestsidegardens.org/volunteer (email route only)

Source first-touch: registry/leads/drafts/historic-westside-gardens-outreach.md

Source row: targets.md F2 (Web-sourced candidates 2026-09-13)

Generated: 2026-09-20 (night-shift)

Assumes: no reply to the first touch (free 60–90 second reel offer)

Register: founder-led food-and-health nonprofit in a food desert; donor/volunteer storytelling and funder communication, not a hard sell

Cadence

|-------|--------|---------|------------------|

| 2 | D+12 | IG DM | Free one-page "From Vacant Lot to 90 Seconds" donor-story mini-guide (Appendix A) |

| 3 | D+20 | IG DM | Honest proof point, funder register: a grant report wants a face, not a paragraph |

| 4 | D+28 | IG DM | Seasonal hook: fall harvest + year-end giving, the "your giving did this" donor and volunteer asset |

| 5 | D+36 | IG DM | Door-open close, no ask |

Flags — read before sending

1. Channel. Instagram DM @historic_westside_gardens is primary. There is no published email or phone on the site. Facebook DM to facebook.com/HistoricWestsideGarden is the fallback; the only email route is the volunteer form at historicwestsidegardens.org/volunteer. One channel per touch — do not double- or triple-send the same touch across IG, FB, and the form.

2. Verify Rosario Hernandez is still Executive Director & Founder before Touch 1. Sourced 2026-09-13 from the Meet the Team page; roles rotate. Khari Diop (Director Programs & Personnel) is the alternate and the greeting swaps.

3. No fabricated facts. Only use what is in the first-touch draft and the F2 row: founded 2010, five greenspaces, the four-part mission (Home Food Gardens, Wellness Education, Health Advocacy, Economic Empowerment), the Westside Growers Market (pop-up/mobile markets, produce bundles), 380 Elm St NW, partners Center for Civic Innovation ATL and Wholesome Wave Georgia. Do not invent garden counts, families served, pounds of produce, market dates, event names, grants, awards, or quotes.

4. Touch 3 must stay at "early / putting together / no finished episodes" for the Little Five Points series, and "mission-driven media work I've done" for Detroit Action. Do not upgrade either to finished episodes or results until that is actually true. Westside Future Fund is a cold prospect, not a client — do not name it as prior work in this sequence.

5. The seasonal hook is fall harvest in Georgia and year-end giving/impact-report season (Q4). Touch 4 names no specific date or event. If Brandyn wants to name a real market morning, confirm the actual market schedule first.

6. Do not imply Historic Westside Gardens is a current client anywhere. It is a cold prospect. The only orgs named as real work in this sequence are Little Five Points (the series, "putting together") and Detroit Action (factual prior media work, held soft).

7. Keep each touch short. These are DMs, not emails. Stay under ~120 words per touch. Appendix A's full text is too long for a single DM — send it condensed, or as a link or Google Doc.

8. Stop the moment they reply. This is a conversation, not a drip. Any response restarts as a real thread and the remaining touches get dropped.

Touch 1 — The founder's line made visible (D+5)

Channel: Instagram DM @historic_westside_gardens

Rosario — your line, "access to healthy food changed my life," is the whole mission in one sentence. A website can state it. It can't show a vacant lot turning into a garden bed, or a neighbor pulling their own tomatoes off a vine.

If there's one garden or one market morning you'd point a camera at first, that's where I'd start.

~65 words. Leads with Rosario's own published line, not a re-offer of the free shoot. "You pick it" carries forward from the first touch. The concrete imagery (vacant lot to garden bed, tomatoes off a vine) is the food-and-health story a donation page can describe but never show.

Alternate channel (Facebook DM): same message to facebook.com/HistoricWestsideGarden, addressed "Rosario —", signed "— Brandyn / ghostcoast.video". If emailing instead, the only route is the volunteer form at historicwestsidegardens.org/volunteer; open with the first-touch email's line about her mission quote and fold in the "vacant lot to garden bed" idea, keeping it under 200 words.

Touch 2 — Free asset: the donor-story mini-guide (D+12)

Channel: Instagram DM @historic_westside_gardens

Rosario — I put together a one-page guide for turning one of your greenspaces or a market morning into a 90-second donor story. It's written so you could hand it to whoever runs a garden or the growers market.

It's below, no strings. If the "one story a season" rhythm reads like something that'd feed your donor letters and your grant applications, that's the part I'd want to build with you.

— Brandyn / ghostcoast.video

~70 words. Delivers Appendix A. The "hand it to whoever runs a garden or the growers market" framing is aimed at a founder who has to make the case internally, not at a direct video buyer.

Touch 3 — The proof point, honest (D+20)

Channel: Instagram DM @historic_westside_gardens

Rosario — I'm putting a short interview series together over in Little Five Points right now, and I'll be straight: early, no finished episodes yet.

What I know from the mission-driven media work I've done, Detroit Action included, is that a grant report wants a face, not a paragraph. A funder remembers the neighbor harvesting their own food, not the column of numbers.

When the first L5P cuts land I'll send you one, so you can judge it instead of taking my word.

— Brandyn / ghostcoast.video

~90 words. The funder register. Claims only what is true: the L5P series is "putting together," no episodes, no metrics. Detroit Action is held at "mission-driven media work I've done" — a fact, not a results claim and not a client relationship. Does not imply Historic Westside Gardens is a client anywhere.

Touch 4 — Fall harvest + year-end giving hook (D+28)

Channel: Instagram DM @historic_westside_gardens

Rosario — one timing note, then I'll get out of your way. Fall harvest in Georgia and year-end giving sit right on top of each other, and the hard part is making a year of garden work land as something a donor or a new volunteer can feel.

The fix is one morning. A 60-second piece on a neighbor's first harvest, or a market morning with the growers, turns "here's what we did this year" into "your giving did this." That's what brings back a donor and fills the next volunteer workday.

If the calendar's already locked, no problem. The garden keeps either way.

— Brandyn / ghostcoast.video

~105 words. Uses the real seasonal hook (Georgia fall harvest window and Q4 giving/impact-report season) without naming a specific date. The "count into a 'your giving did this'" angle covers both the donor/end-of-year and volunteer-recruitment registers, distinct from the WFF year-end/Summit, FCS year-end, and Trees Atlanta planting-season angles.

Touch 5 — Door-open close (D+36)

Channel: Instagram DM @historic_westside_gardens

Rosario — I've sent a few notes over the last month and won't keep them coming if the timing's off. A founder's got enough on it.

The offer stands. If Historic Westside Gardens ever wants its greenspaces and its growers on camera, I'm around. And when the Little Five Points series is finished, I'll send you a link anyway. It's the honest version of what I've been describing.

— Brandyn / ghostcoast.video

~70 words. No ask, no recap, no guilt. Closes on the honest forward promise (the L5P link), which doubles as a reason to keep the thread.

Appendix A — "From Vacant Lot to 90 Seconds" donor-story mini-guide

The deliverable for Touch 2. Self-contained; paste into an email, a DM (condensed), or a Google Doc.

From Vacant Lot to 90 Seconds — turning a greenspace into a donor story

What it is. A short recipe for taking one real moment in the food-and-health work — a garden bed going in, a neighbor's harvest, a market morning — and turning it into a 90-second story a donor or a funder can feel.

Why it works. "Access to healthy food changed my life" is a sentence until someone says it on camera. A donor gives to a person, not a program. The four-part mission — home gardens, wellness education, health advocacy, economic empowerment — is a list. The neighbor pulling their own tomatoes off a vine is the mission.

The recipe.

1. Pick one garden, one grower, one market morning.

2. Ask one question and let them answer in their own words: "What changed for you when this lot became a garden?"

3. Show the change, don't describe it. A vacant lot turning into a bed. Hands in dirt. A full basket. A table of produce on a corner.

4. Keep it to one person, one place, one change. That is the whole 90 seconds.

5. End on the mission's own line — the person standing in the garden, holding what they grew.

What a donor or funder gets.

A face behind the word "impact"
A reason to give again
A shareable piece that does the asking for the org

What Historic Westside Gardens gets.

Donor cultivation and retention: the second gift is the hard one, and it is earned with a face
Grant-ready footage: impact shown instead of described
A library ready for the next year-end letter and the next grant report

The rule of thumb. A donor remembers the neighbor with the full basket, not the number of greenspaces.

Notes for Brandyn

Appendix A is ready to deploy as a one-page PDF or Google Doc for Touch 2. The "vacant lot to 90 seconds" angle is what makes it Historic-Westside-Gardens-specific rather than a generic nonprofit checklist, and it is distinct from the WFF "Home on the Westside" one-pager, the FCS "One Block, In Place" one-pager, the Grove Park "one block, ninety seconds" guide, and the Trees Atlanta planting-day checklist.
Strongest touch if only one gets sent: Touch 1 (the founder's own line made visible). Touch 4 (fall harvest + year-end) is the close second because it is tied to the Q4 giving/impact-report calendar, which is when a small founder-led nonprofit actually needs story assets.
Detroit Action stays soft. It is referenced in Touch 3 only as "mission-driven media work I've done." Do not upgrade to a case study or results claim. Westside Future Fund is deliberately not named as GCV work here — it is a cold prospect, not a client.
Downstream asks stay held until a real conversation, per the first-touch draft: paid recurring series, event coverage, grant-report video. None of these appear as asks in this sequence.
No fabricated clients, metrics, program names, dates, or testimonials anywhere. Only Historic Westside Gardens' own published facts are named: founded 2010, five greenspaces, the four-part mission, the Westside Growers Market, 380 Elm St NW, and the founder's "access to healthy food changed my life" line.