When it comes to motivating their members, nonprofits might want to start thinking like for-profit businesses. Business has long cultivating the craft of motivating people to go out and do whatever it is they need them to do, and they’ve developed a great number of very persuasive tools to help do just that.
The good news is that it’s easy for nonprofits to use these same tools of persuasion, with the added benefit that most nonprofit members actually want to get out and help the cause.
Today we’ll discuss a few of the online tools that nonprofits of all shapes and sizes can use to increase their member engagement and expand their outreach.
There’s a reason that nonprofit members are called “members” and not “customers.” Nonprofits are all about collaboration, and your members are a crucial part of the apparatus that will allow your organization to continue to evolve and grow. Member feedback is critical, and one of the easiest ways to get it is to ask some questions.
The Internet has provided countless venues for communicating with members, and you should be using all of them. Post questions on Facebook, on your blog, on Twitter and seriously consider the responses you get. When members feel like they’re being listened to, they’re much more likely to participate and get engaged.
Every nonprofit has members or employees who are experts in their particular field. Put that knowledge to work for you and simultaneously demonstrate your organization’s expertise by hosting a blog. A blog can be updated weekly, or even monthly, so the time demands are minimal, and it will give your members a perfect chance to get involved and help the community as a whole.
Just like a blog, social media is a perfect opportunity to show how active you are and increase the engagement of your members. Post pictures, stories, or even fun contests to get your members contributing and talking.
An email is a great tool for keeping in touch with your members and keeping them up-to-date on the happenings in your organization. While email is an excellent tool, it can be easy to abuse, so just be sure that the emails your sending are full of valuable and relevant information – there’s nothing worse than spam.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of the ways that you can stay engaged with your membership online, but it will lay a very solid groundwork for your engagement endeavors.
Stay tuned to the CollectiveSun Blog for more innovative ideas about how to increase your membership engagement and continue growing and evolving your organization as a whole.
