Many thanks to Volunteer Fairfax and Exxon Mobile for inviting me to speak with the participants in this year’s Community Summer Jobs Program. I’m looking forward to meeting everyone and enjoying a great discussion!
Building an online community is a fun and dynamic way to connect with your audience. While community building seems like an easy thing to do, a solid plan will ensure that you (and your internal stakeholders) understand who you are trying to reach and why. When we launched our social media plan for GoodDogz.org, we had many audiences to address – animal rescue volunteers, dog owners, dog adopters, pet professionals, donors – how would we engage them all? With some research and a lot of “listening“, we realized that each group was communicating in a different part of the social media space and we engaged them on their turf.
We set-up a growing animal welfare professional networking community within a LinkedIn group. Yahoo Groups provided a perfect forum for rescue volunteers to tell other organizations about dogs in need. Our NING community provided a full community where dog owners and potential adopters can connect with each other and we can connect with them. Through VolunteerMatch, we’ve successfully recruited a myriad of volunteers. We use tools like Facebook and Twitter to help promote events and initiatives. And while our community is growing, we have been less successful had we not taken the time to understand what we were trying to accomplish.
The formula for creating a plan is pretty simple and is reminiscent reporting for my school newspaper.
Who? Who is your audience? Donors? Board members? Volunteers? Employees?
What? What are they talking about? Are they trying to raise awareness? Are they concerned about a news item or political initiative?
When? Are they engaging during the workday? On the weekends?
Where? Where are they carrying on their conversations? Facebook? Twitter? Blogs?
Why? (Goals) Why do you want to get engage your audience? For donations? To raise awareness about a particular issue? To recruit volunteers?
How? (Tactics) How are you going to be part of the conversation? How will you gauge success?
Once you’ve established answers to the questions above and feel good about your plan, you can start setting up your community and promoting it. As long as you engage your members and nurture the community, it will give back to you ten-fold.
Here are a few additional resources to help you get your head around community building:
I am doing a little inbox housecleaning before I take the week off next week and thought I’d share a couple of really great resources with you. Two articles focus on using email in your campaigns and the other is a great wrap-up on keeping your head up during tough economic times.
Network for Good has a great free download for NPOs who want to improve their email fundraising.
Change.org has also recently released a comprehensive post entitled 15 Steps to Launching a Successful E-mail Petition Campaign on Change.org. This is an area that I struggle with and this post really does a wonderful job of spelling out the details.
Network for Good also ran a great telesmeinar last month on maintaining sustainability during tough economic times. All of the materials are here.
I’ll be at Blog Potomac all day tomorrow. If you are going to be there give me a shout so I can say hello!
Ummm…WordPress hosed me on publishing this post on Monday. I’m looking at the scheduler now and it says June 8, but alas, it wasn’t published. So here are the webinars for the remainder of the week. Sorry for the glitch!
Wow! There are so many great webinars scheduled for this week! I hope that you find one that’s right for you! Also, if you would like to see your nonprofit webinars included on this list, please let me know and I will be in touch!
Here’s a little something something for a rainy Friday. I say, TGIF anyway!
Enjoy this GREAT round-up of presentations on social media for nonprofits from Rebecca Leaman, Wild Apricot! Rebecca’s blog is a must for anyone interested in social media marketing for nonprofits. Subscribe. Bookmark. Delicious. (Here is the excerpt at Mr. Tweet as a bonus)
Happy Friday!
Let’s face it – planning is a necessary yet sometimes boring part of any job or project. While we typically want to jump in and “do” planning can stop us from “doing” things that don’t support the mission or goal. And sometimes, we may not even know what the goal really is.
TechSoup has a great relationship with Microsoft that allows eligible nonprofits to purchase discounted MS software. However, there are some guidelines including limitations to the number of licenses you can purchase and number of purchases you can make per year. So a little planning is in order.
Check out TechSoup’s excellent four-part series on creating a tech plan for the year and purchasing your MS software in a way that makes sense. Don’t squander the opportunity. Take the time to read through these great resources and take advantage of this great offer! Software is expensive and quite frankly, I hate buying it. But, TechSoup makes it easy and affordable. Check it out:
- Microsoft Solutions to Boost Your Productivity
- How to Make a Tech Plan that Helps You All Year
The TechSoup purchasing year ends on June 30, so be sure to get your requests in ASAP. Don’t miss this great opportunity!
nonprofit and social enterprise jobs
This is a very interesting time to be alive. The world is changing and although the economy is spiraling and the world is generally in upheaval, it’s inspirational to see how folks are reacting and rising to the occasion. So many more people who have either found themselves out of work or are not happy with the way things are going want to be part of the solution.
Change.org has recently launched a new initiative, Jobs for Change, to help people who want to make social change find a job that will empower them to do so. The program came to fruition with the support of a dozen partners including Campus Compact, AmeriCorps Alums, Young Nonprofit Professionals Network, Echoing Green, New Organizing Institute, Encore Careers, and Network for Good.
The goal of Jobs for Change is to spark a nationwide movement toward careers in the common good – including nonprofit, government, and social enterprise jobs.
The initiative includes a variety of resources including job listings, career advisors, Q&A, and job postings for employers. As of this posting, there were 732 jobs in the live database.
So whether you are looking for a new job or wanting to make a change, take a look at Jobs for Change. You’ll be glad you did.
I wanted to take a minute today to give some love to my friends at TechSoup. I received my Spring 2009 Product Catalog yesterday and have been making some purchasing decisions for GoodDogz.org. Software is so expensive, but so vital to nonprofits and TechSoup has made it so easy to get what you need at vastly discounted prices. You can even purchase computers and computer equipment. They also offer a myriad of online resources to help NPOs better utilize the technology that’s available.
In return, TechSoup needs your support. Get involved. Participate in their forums, Facebook and Second Life.
Check out TechSoup Global, TechSoup’s latest initiative to help ensure that changents all over the globe have the technical tools that they need. Also, take a look at NetSquared, another program from TechSoup. NetSquared believes that the social Web is the key to change.
Tell your friends about TechSoup – they are here to help your NPO succeed!
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I work with businesses on marketing strategy, tactics and social media tool selection. I help create effective ways to leverage social media to meet business and marketing goals while cultivating customer engagement. How can I help you?
