There are so many invaluable charities doing amazing work but needing help either with finding volunteers, funding, publicity, and overall visibility. With tight budgets, traditional marketing is becoming more and more difficult. However, creating a presence online can cost nothing more than time, and if you have the right online tools and education it makes things a whole lot easier.
This past April, StepForth’s CEO, Ross Dunn, traveled across BC with Sociability’s Terri Davies and Accent Inn’s John Espley to present to charities and non-profits about improving their visibility online; this is Ross’s second year as a featured speaker on this charity road tour. This event, called “Charity in Changing Times,” was sponsored by Accent Inns “InnAid” initiative designed to educate charities on marketing themselves through social platforms.
This event covered:
- Tips to improve your website
- How to set up a Facebook and Twitter account
- Social media etiquette and strategies
- Tools for tracking and monitoring your online activity
- Successful case studies of charities implementing social media campaigns
The event series turned out to be a huge success and we received a lot of positive feedback from the non-profit community that attended. As a result, StepForth has decided to create a video series of the content covered in this presentation open for all to view. These videos will be available on our website very shortly.
We would like to continue to build relationships with organizations in this industry and in doing so will be offering our services at a discounted rate. Currently, we have just started working alongside a new charity called “Human Earth Relationship Development” aka “HERD.” Their mandate is to raise awareness of animal issues through the use of film in the form of documentaries. Their initial pilot project is a film called “Elephants Never Forget” and will be focusing on Asian street elephants in Thailand. As we start to increase our involvement with charities we will be sure to keep you posted.
To learn more about our discounted services for charities feel free to give us a call at 250-385-1190. In the meantime, here are some useful free tools specifically for non-profits that have proved to be very beneficial:
Google for Non Profits: www.google.com/nonprofits/
- This program is very powerful and highly recommended but it is only available to charities and non-profits headquartered in the States.
YouTube for Non-Profits: socialimpact.youtube.com
- Available to Canada and includes compelling case studies to learn from.
- Available to Canada and includes ideas on how to use Flickr to further your organization.
- “The Google Grants program empowers non-profit organizations to achieve their goals by helping them promote their websites via advertising on Google. Google AdWords ads appear when users search on Google. When you click one of the ads, you are brought to the website being advertised.”
Flickr for Non-Profits by TechSoup:
- Available to Canada and includes ideas on how to use Flickr to further your organization.
Google Grants: google.ca/intl/en/grants
- “The Google Grants program empowers non-profit organizations to achieve their goals by helping them promote their websites via advertising on Google. Google AdWords ads appear when users search on Google. When you click one of the ads, you are brought to the website being advertised.”