Mrs. Shakuntala Bose* approached me with a peculiar problem. She has been running a NGO providing counseling services to the inmates languishing in Government Run Hospitals and Correction Homes. With about twenty odd employees and volunteers, she was hard pressed to make ends meet with the meager resources that she could generate by her efforts and donations from friends, family and well wishers. There was huge untapped funds earmarked by the corporate sector ostensibly for such CSR activities which she wanted to tap yet could not as she knew precious little about the functioning of these corporates. Advertising as an option was ruled out. As she put it, “I feel it is unethical to use our limited funds on publicity. How can I utilize the monies collected with a promise to help the hapless rotting away in the jails to promote ourselves? For argument’s sake, even if we did, we could never bear such huge expenses of creating and maintaining an ad-campaign to communicate our message.”
To such organisations, social media is opening up a vast new world of opportunities. Here’s the road map I created for her. May the destitute ladies, often abandoned by their own family, breathe that much happier:
- Create a website of your organisation. Keep it simple and try to incorporate pictures (yes, the types that says a hundred things) and testimonials – from the officials, the volunteers, those actually healed.
- Open a Face Book page and invite all your friends and associates to join.
- Join Linked-in and connect with all your professional colleagues. They may be the officers you deal with, professionals working with other NGO’s, people in your organisation, officers and gentlemen you know, in short anybody in your professional circuit.
- Start Blogging. You may not be the best wordsmith around, but do not let that deter you. When you talk from experience and your words naturally reflect your passion, the prose becomes poetry. Keep writing, posting your real life experiences, sharing your concerns, detailing the hurdles that you face, highlighting how you overcome them, and spinning yarns about those who have no one who cares.
- You tube. Post little videos – live footages for the frontiers of apathy. You are not making a Federico Fellini masterpiece, you are merely stating facts. So, yank out that handy-cam and let the frames roll.
So far it is easy. And if you are diligent in your efforts, you can achieve a reasonable amount of success (and content) within the first six months. The next step is to link up all these platforms so that the content that you generate seamlessly spread across them.
The next step is to invite all your employees, volunteers and associates to use these platforms to further spread the stories to their respective networks of friends and associates. The idea is to gather all hands on the deck so that your efforts are strengthened that many times. They should be encouraged not only to actively participate in the conversations, but also to contribute their experiences, thoughts on the subjects being discussed.
Once you have a reasonable amount of noise around your platforms, try and link in with potential donors. Befriend the bosses of the chambers of commerce and industry. Send friend request to officers in charge of CSR activities in large corporate houses. Link up with the functionaries of multinational donor organisations. Create access though people to the UN funds and organisations that are working in the areas in which you operate. Spread your presence using the social media and project yourself – highlighting the good things that you do, so that you are noticed, by those that matter.
You should be reaching this third stage by about a year’s time. This will be marked by increased amount of visitors to your blogs. The conversations will become more intense and animated. Requests to volunteer will increase. And God willing, you may even generate some positive leads that will bring in some moolah!
It is now time to court the media. Link in with as many journalists doing the beat (NGO / Charitable Organisations / Developmental Journalism) as you can. Add the local papers, channels, radio stations, freelancers as also the prominent bloggers and opinion makers. Keep sending them Press Releases along with relevant photographs. Do not despair if most of it is trashed. Even if they are, remember some journalist, somewhere has seen your copy and has filed it in his / her mind for use in the future. And, in case anything is reported, make sure you file and run it through all your platforms. Third party endorsement, especially from the media is known to work wonders.
You are now ready o create action and excitement. Build small events – say a visit to an old age home to distribute sweets and provide counseling services on the eve of Christmas. Create a Facebook event. Run it through your social media space to invite volunteers. Invite a few local celebrities. Invite the Press. The press will be there for the celebrity pictures and the Celebrity will be there for the photo opportunity. The idea is to be clever enough to use both, for if not used judiciously, the celebrity will hog all the limelight with your event going uncovered. On the other extreme, you stand to lose out on the opportunity of celebrity endorsement of your brand.
Use such events to reach out to local companies, corporates for sponsorships. These are fund raisers but by no means are restricted only to monies. If a local confectionery wishes to sponsor the small eats, so be it.
The more such events you have the more visible you become, becoming more acceptable to the large corporates as potential recipient of their CSR largesse. Here too, the message that should go out is that not only will you help them channelize their funds to the right recipients, but will also help them by showing the world their good deeds.
Inshallah, this should be enough for starters. May the force be with you.
*Name changed