Nonprofits by their very nature are in touch with the very human face of the

Kelli Parks Snider, ProjectGirl.org and Girls

people and public they serve.  Many grassroots causes are entirely dependent on volunteer efforts to get anything accomplished.  Finding creative and non-traditional funding sources is task one these days.  Considering “how” not “if” to use social media to stay connected  and find new funding sources should be the topic at the advisory board table.

Social media at its core is a two-way conversation using Internet technology that brings value to the participants through sharing knowledge and information.

If you are a nonprofit are you investigating the use of social media as a channel to connect with your audience?

Extending manpower and budgets

In the town of Lodi WI, the YMCA of Dane County runs a branch – managing the swimming pool operations, swim lessons, lap swim and providing swim lessons to students. They also run fun and increasing numbers of low cost programs designed for healthy living styles for children, adults and seniors. Clearly only a fraction of the programs would be in place if it weren’t for donations, fees recovered for programs, volunteer supervisors and instructors. At the same time, monies collected allow the YMCA to provide scholarships, such as the Strong Kids Campaign, to individuals and families that otherwise would not be able to participate.

It is important for the directors of any type of program to stay in touch with all aspects of the community at large including those who provide funding, those who participate in various programs and those who need to understand the benefit to the community. Creating a blog, an email newsletter and periodic print updates would be some nice communication additions, if they can either afford the time and/or the cost to do so. But can they afford not to do so?

ProjectGirl.org a grassroots nonprofit in Oregon, WI, was able to use social media (Youtube, LinkedIn, Blogs, Facebook and MySpace), email marketing, and Word of Mouth to generate awareness of a youth activism campaign sponsored by Best Buy.  The success of that campaign gained them over $100,000 for support of their curriculum which teaches girls self esteem and critical thinking using multi media technology, video and art to express themselves.

Today, leaders of nonprofits need to consider alternative sources of funding.  With the contributors of the past now out of work in many cases, recognizing that new partnerships and alliances will need to be formed is at the heart of accomplishing missions.   Social media can help possible alliance partners to find your nonprofit and cause.  It allows you to voice your needs and mission.  It also allows you to initiate conversations with supporters, volunteers and mentors.

Cause Marketing

Companies that join with social causes to sell products not only enhance their image but also improve their bottom line, say University of Michigan researchers. This certainly can help but it also benefits the company in terms of profits.

According to Uday Rajan, one of the Michigan researchers,

“Firms can use cause marketing to increase prices and profits, but should be aware of the implications of placing different products on cause marketing,” Rajan said. “For public policy officials and consumers who may believe that cause-marketing firms are more caring firms and are genuinely interested in helping others, it may be insightful to understand that cause marketing also allows firms to increase their prices and profits.”

Many corporations are seeking creative and unique ways to differentiate themselves beyond product and services. Employees develop greater loyalty to companies that support long-term good works. It’s also being taken into account in the lists for “Best Companies to Work For.”

A good way for nonprofits to start is with reviewing what other larger organizations have done.  The American Cancer Society has a policy developed to find the right match of partners.

Is your company doing any cause marketing? Has your nonprofit used social media to enhance its interaction with donors, volunteers and its community?

Related posts:

1. What I learned at the Midwest Internet Marketing Super Conference
2. How can social media help my business? Part 2

Wired Wisconsin is a coalition of concerned individuals, businesses and organizations working to put the state of Wisconsin on the cutting edge of technology. However, like most nonprofits they face challenges in trying to raise funds for outreach and marketing of their message. With only two or three employees and a couple of interns, how do they accomplish statewide what they need to do?

A social approach

After meeting several key staff members of Wired Wisconsin during the recent event – Government 2.0 | Utilizing Social Media – I looked at how they are using  social media efforts to accomplish their organizational goals and the partnerships they are forming along the way.

Wired Wisconsin is actively using social media in their public relations and outreach efforts. They appear to have started their blog about 1 year ago in October of 2008 with weekly updates to Twitter included.  The blog does not identify the author(s)  in anyway, and its lacking a personality at this point. They have a Website setup as a home base for traditional media and social media.  They have links to their Twitter profile, Facebook, Youtube, Podcasts, and a RSS feed for their blog.

Practicing what you preach

You can see that they started slow, with a website and added a blog.  You should have a strong “home” for social media links.  Just consider that with a bio area of 160 characters on Twitter, you don’t have a lot of room to state your mission and issues. So take the time to have good landing pages on your website to explain your mission.  If your budget doesn’t allow that yet, be sure to create a solid LinkedIn profile or other social media profile with very complete details that can help deliver more of your brand and various content for you, but one should be designated as home.

The first six months of blog posts are all Twitter weekly updates of news articles that they added to the Tweet stream. This is an inbound marketing tactic.  This is a good way to start with baby steps based on resources and time. Starting in February 2009, Wired Wisconsin began to offer monthly blog opinion blog posts about the issues they have coalesced around.

May 2009 brought a new addition to the action plan. Bring article content around core issues from other journalists and editorials directly into the blog posts. The Twitter updates continued and in fact they are longer and appear to more much more active during this time period.  Wired Wisconsin also penned more opinion posts covering issues.

While it appears that their Twitter activity is all about outbound press and news media type content, by creating a blog post out of the update (through the use of TwitterTools plugin on their blog)  it does help to give them weekly posts and document activity for the non Twitter users who may want to stay in touch with these issues.

Incorporating video posts

Emily Lenard, Associate Director,  explained that they have used Youtube to post their videos for free and feed to other social media sites such as Facebook. They have an ongoing program to interview state politicians on their stands for issues pertinent to Wired Wisconsin and post them on their Website.

Other uses that they have planned to put in practice for social media include:

• Press conferences
• News
• Events
• Issue presentations
• Action alerts
• Interviews
• Programs

Wired Wisconsin comments

Emily Lenard has a few comments about a blogging strategy government agencies and nonprofits can follow that might help with blog ideas:

Audit and assess regularly

After a year, it may be time for Wired Wisconsin to take stock and review their activities, audiences, spaces and places for social media sites interaction.  Evaluating and benchmarking the progress over the past year for subscribers, comments, membership growth, partner additions and activity should shed some light on any changes in directions that they should pursue.

Ideally they should be blogging 2-3 times per week.  If the goal of the blog is to strictly be a news source they are doing a good job of that.  I think that they could  increase the Wired Wisconsin opinion pieces to give someone a sense of the passion and drive this organization has to make change happen. And personally, I would like to get sense of who the authors are.

Social media is about people after all and we don’t connect with companies and organizations, we connect and share passions and interest with the people inside them.

Do you have a nonprofit I should review?

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• Homeland Security Information Sharing and Social Media (apache.sys-con.com)

Related posts:

1. Government 2.0 | Is using social media the same or different than B2B
2. Working with social media | Thoughts on Blogs | Week October 30, 2009
3. Social Media Tools |Thoughts on Blogs | Week of 11-06-2009