These are unprecedented times. I know we are all tired of this expression but it’s completely true. The world has turned upside down. Everything has changed from the way we work to the way we interact with others. Our lives have gone online, even more than before. Since we can’t gather in groups, we’ve turned to digital communication and expression. My organization has witnessed this migration in our website traffic and social media engagement. Traffic to our wish list, volunteering and board pages have increased and Facebook engagement has been as high as 14%. Even our Twitter accounts, which has been a struggle to maintain, has increased engagement.
Why? Our programs serve vulnerable populations including people experiencing homelessness and domestic violence and low-income seniors. Our programs are essential services and our employees are front line workers. We’ve been able to keep most of our programs running but we’ve cancelled most of our volunteer opportunities due to social distancing rules. Even as businesses and offices open up, we are most likely not going to be able to go back to normal for a long while. Asking 10 volunteers to serve 200 people in a cafeteria line three time a day is just not feasible in our small quarters. We will have to manage without volunteers present in our facilities for the foreseeable future. The same is true for donors or community leaders who want to tour our facilities.
But this is not a complaint or a burden. We live in a very caring and generous community and many people still want to help. They are trying to find ways to do that at a distance. Donors are sending us direct messages through our social media or website asking what we need. Volunteers are going online and purchasing items off our Amazon wish list, assembling bag lunches and dropping them off at the back door of our shelter, and volunteering to sew masks for our employees and clients. We’ve heard from them that they appreciate the chance to make this weird time better for our clients. It’s wonderful that they care so much in the midst of such uncertainty and unrest.
Like many nonprofits, we are behind the times in terms of digital communication. My three person team manages a very large website and several social media channels. We engage through comment forms, likes, and shares but not through content collection or any deeper engagement. We have supporter email lists but send only e-appeals most of the time. We have a limited budget for digital advertising and search engine marketing but don’t follow up when visitors arrive on the website. Our digital strategies are sometimes postscripts in our marketing and communication planning because we do not have a dedicated digital marketer. Right now, at this moment, this is a huge issue.
I see the future of supporter engagement in front of us and it is mostly through digital means. Even if the world goes back to a semblance of normal, I think our mindset has changed when it comes to authentic communication and real-time engagement. We’ve learned to host happy hours on Zoom and shop for school supplies and food on Amazon. We’ve realized that cooking a family meal and watching Netflix together can be fulfilling. Our supporters are asking if they can make a difference in their community from the safety of their home. We will have to run to catch up with them.
What can we do to digitally engage supporters with limited resources? These are definitely unprecedented times for my team.
