OLD Jayne Blog on nonprofits/ngos, communications, community engagement, volunteerism, aid & development, women's empowerment, & random thoughts

Texting your location - something for nonprofits?

13:44, 17 August 2010

.. Posted in Communication, Outreach and General Mngmt

It's all the rage now -- sending a text message to all your friends/ cell phones, or via your status message on your Facebook account, or via your Twitter account, saying where you are:

"Jayne just entered the Starbuck's in Canby."

Some people do it manually, and some people have their smart phones configured with a certain application so that their location is sent out automatically if they enter a restaurant or store that is also using the same application.

Most of the time, I don't care that one of my friends has just entered some store or restaurant somewhere, per their automatically-generated Facebook status.

That said, this texting-your-location trend is something that your nonprofit can leverage. How?

At the start of your volunteer recognition event, display a message on an overhead projector and ask all attendees to take out their cell phones or smart phones and to text it or tweet it right at that moment to everyone in their contact list, their followers or via their status update to their contacts. The message could be I am at the recognition event for volunteers of such-and-such organization. Great time! And then ask everyone to then turn their phones OFF!

As a volunteer starts his or her first shift staffing a table at a public event, ask them to send out the message Come to such-and-such event @ number street address & look for me @ the such-and-such booth! Stop by & say hi!

Ask attendees at your opening night for the season at your nonprofit theater to send the message I'm @ opening night of such-and-such at name-of-theater. Call xxx-xxx-xxxx for tix. On with the show! And then ask everyone to then turn their phones OFF!

Ask students attending a class your nonprofit is providing to text a message at the start or at the end of the class. Learning/learned to do such-and-such at name-of-organization. It's fun/tough/exciting/challenging/interesting!

After the volunteer firefighters finish putting away the equipment after a particularly intense or large emergency response, encourage them to send a message, as appropriate, to their network, such as, Just finished response to factory fire in such-&-such-area. More than xx volunteers responded. Photos soon @ Flickr.

Remember that messages need to be 120 characters or less, to meet the standards of all cell phones (yes, some phones accept longer messages, but believe it or not, some people don't have smart phones!).

These messages get a personalized, informal message out to your supporters' own networks -- their friends, neighbors, colleagues. These messages from your supporters shows how active your organization is and further builds awareness about your activities. These messages can generate interest among new volunteers and new audiences, attract larger numbers of attendees to an event, and augment your other outreach efforts.

However, don't abuse this. Most volunteers, audience members, clients, etc., don't want to send lots of messages on behalf of your organization to their network, and their network doesn't want to be overwhelmed with such messages. And sending such a message should always be entirely voluntarily on the part of those you are encouraging to send this message; never make sending such a message mandatory for volunteers, for instance.

If you encourage your volunteers, event attendees, etc. to text-their-location at the start, during or at the end of an event, track the results: do you see an increase in the number of phone calls or emails to your organization regarding volunteering? An increase in phone calls requesting more information? More attendees to an event? Ask your volunteers and other supporters as well what kind of responses they get per a message they have sent out to their network.

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