Nonprofit-Performance-360-Vol-1-No-1-Maxwell

LOVE Beautiful Music?

Direct Your Organization Like a Symphony Orchestra!

The Definitive Leader Transformational Leadership Systems and Strategies Hugh Ballou 540-250-2593 HBallou@SynerVision.us

dramatic in what they allow for philanthropic and social responsibility organizations. Case in point, consider the United Way of Salt Lake. That organization’s spokesperson, Jerilyn Stowe, reported the following outcome: “We learned about the platform we use, EveryoneSocial,when we were about to launch a grassroots advocacy campaign focused on passing a specific piece of legislation – The Utah School Readiness Initiative, HB 96. As part of our plan, we knew we needed to spread awareness about the importance of high quality preschool for at-risk children in our community and to share details about the bill. “We started our campaign in early January. It was a multi-channel effort that included e-mails, phone calls, and one-on-one meetings with legislators. “One of the important criteria was that we needed people to take specific action at specific times (such as when the bill was in

the Education Committee or was being heard on the House or Senate floor, etc.) We also needed people to come to the Capitol and participate in direct lobbying with us. At those times we flooded our content stream with videos, blog posts, news articles, fact sheets, and everything we could create and gather that related to high quality preschool and HB 96. We also incentivized our staff with contests and prizes to encourage them to share content at key times. “The result was fantastic! Not only did we pass the bill, we matched our opposing organization who is bigger, much more organized, and has many more supporters, e-mail for e-mail, letter for letter, and call for call. “I truly believe our success occurred because we had social media “muscle” at our disposal that those opposing the bill did not. We now use our employee advocacy platform to help us manage news, blogs, content, etc. Our staff

loves these tools and the process of social media sharing has become a part of what they do within their jobs every day.” Clearly, the power of social media is an even greater power where social responsibility work is involved. Community participants who have reached the maximum they are able to do in volunteer hours and monetary contributions are happy to participate further by helping to share social media messages, by spending their money with retailers who support social responsibility causes, and by doing what they are able to work within socially responsible organizations and firms. Armed with this knowledge — what are you waiting for? Cheryl Snapp Conner is a national columnist and professional communicator. She is the founding partner of communications company Snapp Conner PR and is author of an upcoming book Beyond Words: How to Communicate Like a Champion in the Digital Age .

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