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Help me with my idea to get students involved in service
I run Empowering Students, a state and federal not-for-profit aimed at engaging students in volunteerism. Our official mission statement is more or less this: let us offer the resources to students to find an organization they are passionate about and that needs their help.
We list in our site charities by city -- so far, we have 100 charities listed in Indianapolis with plans to expand to Chicago, Columbus and elsewhere. On our site, we don't simply list a mission statement and contact information for a charity. We carefully take the time to syndicate their blogs, include a mirrored donate page, and make the page look legitimate and credible. We contact each organization individually to verify their information we put on the site.
Simply having this database of organizations is worthless if no one looks at it. Therefore, our marketing arm is planning to reach out to local high schools and colleges. At the high school level, we want to connect with both individual students as well as service organizations. We are working to forge a partnership with Key Club International so we can work with local area Key Clubs. To find and inspire individual students who maybe aren't involved with clubs for whatever reason, we are sponsoring volunteer fairs -- where 5-7 charities come in during a school day and set up a booth to describe their cause and sign interested volunteers up.
At the college level our plan is less clear but involves mass marketing with t-shirts, posters, and events like open forums.
What do you think? Are we on to something and, more importantly, what are your suggestions for success?
(www.empoweringstudents.org for those interested)
Armistral .
Armistral .
Regards,
Armistral
Simon Tam
I think you've got a great idea going here. I've been working with non-profits for about 15 years now and do a lot of marketing consulting for organizations. I think there are several approaches that you can take with this:
1) Partner with the non-profit organizations and have them educate their constituents to spread the message about what you are doing (which, in turn, helps promote their organization as well as their partner organizations).
2) In High Schools, target student clubs to see if you can get them to help fundraise/get more attention on your site. You might be able to have different student groups to each select a cause and compete for money raised, hours worked, etc. Key Club is great but many other groups (such as athletics or ethnic identity clubs) love to help a good cause.
3) Partner with local artists to raise awareness; ask bands/photographers/painters to keep postcards at shows, etc. You might be able to do the same with you group in local faith based institutions and get their youth involved.
4) Offer incentives that appeal the appropriate age level to check out the site and support, raffle off prizes, etc (often times, non-profits have a lot of giveaway items).
5) Leverage social media (create a group or page on FB, etc.) and use key word ads/SEO to appeal to the various age. groups. Get your current constituents and nonprofit partners to help promote those links.
6) Find other events that you can table at within your area - outdoor events, conventions, trade fairs, college recruiting events, job recruiting events (and demonstrate how volunteerism can lead to a job)
Anyway, almost out of room here but I hope these ideas help out!