SoMeBizLife Conference 2012 - Doylestown Dog Park Presentation

7/31/2019 SoMeBizLife Conference 2012 - Doylestown Dog Park Presentation

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Doylestown Dog ParkSocial Media for Nonprofits

SoMeBizLife Conference 2012

@dtowndogpark

@sanoagency


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About Kelcey & Joe

Joseph Simek is the cofounder of Sano Agency, a

Doylestown-based company specializing in digital

media consulting and WordPress web design. He

has volunteered with the Friends Of Doylestown

Dog Park since its inception.

Kelcey Meadows-Lucas is the Volunteer Fundraising

Chair For Doylestown Dog Park. Kelcey works as the

Director of Philanthropy for Pennsylvania and New

Jersey at The Humane Society of the United States.


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Isn'tit wonderful that none ofus need wait a moment before

starting to change the world.

-Anne Frank(1929 1945)


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About You!

Raise your hands if you work for a non-profit Raise your hands if you handle the social media for your

nonprofit

Raise your hand if you consider yourself a Social Media Expert(or Beginner)


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All Volunteer Effort

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,

committed citizens can change the world;

indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

- Margaret Mead


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Where We Stand (May 2012) Money Raised: $150,000+

The People: 3 main drivers, 10-person core committee, 30-

person core volunteer, 150-person group of regular event

attenders, Community Sign up of 1,500

Facebook Page Likes: 1,350+

Twitter Followers: 800+

Construction began in March 2012 and we hope to open the

park this summer!


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Doylestown Dog Park


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Doylestown Dog Park


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Keys To Success

1. Targeted Demographic

2. Grassroots Campaigning - Building A Constituency & Supportfrom our Community and Decision Makers

3. Transparency4. Long-term Engagement - Attracting members

5. Crowdsourcing

6. Multi-level Fundraising Plan - Friend-raisers, Fundraisers,Creating Donor Strategies and Naming Opportunities for

Community Projects

7. Acknowledgement

8. Consistency

9. Personal Attachment


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Targeted Demographic

The Dog Parks Fundraising Demographic was identified fairly easily, but

the committees success of raising money underscores the importance

of properly defining a demographic.

INDIVIDUALS

First Tier Doylestown Residents

Second Tier Dog Owners

Third Tier People with disposable income: DINKs (Double

Income No Kids), empty nesters with dogs, gay couples,

families who want new exercise opportunity

BUSINESS

First Tier Doylestown Businesses

Second Tier Animal or Dog Related

Third Tier Ability to Donate Money and In-Kind Services


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DogographicsIts time to include dogs (and animals) into your fundraising efforts

There are 78.2 million dogs in the U.S., according to the

American Pet Products Association, one dog for every four

people. In 1988, the first year the survey was conducted, 56% of

U.S. households owned a pet as compared to 62% in 2012.

Total U.S. Pet Industry ExpendituresYear Billion

2011 $50.96

2004 $34.4

1994 $17

Pet Calculator via AVMA.org Doylestown Borough has:


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Dogographics

Socks (full name: Sockington, The Most Popular Cat on Twitter

@Sockington) (http://www.sockington.org/) described by his

owner as having the attention span of a weathervane, has

1,439,104 followers on Twitter.

Indeed, Socks, along with nine other animals, are listed byMashable as having more social media fans than many major

media outlets (http://mashable.com/2011/07/12/animals-social-

media/).

1 in 10 Pets have a social profile on Facebook, Twitter, andYoutube, according to a recent study done by PetPlan (pet

insurance company)


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Dogographics


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Grassroots Campaigning

Started with a website on a banner, business cards and sign up sheets Tabled every First Friday, Concert in the Park and every event we could

Sign up sheets turned into a email list, which then turned into Facebook

page invitations & event invites to build community support.

We are entirely privately funded. We knew we would need to build a

large base of supporters to get political approval for a dog park and to

raise the funds to build it.


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Social

Tactic

The Power of WordPress!

Inexpensive

No Web Designers Allow For Fast Communication and Changes

Blogging Format Combined With A Traditional Website Layout

Integrates With All Social Networks

Fantastic Search Engine Optimization Subscribe via Email not everyone uses social media

Scalable

How much did Doylestown Dog Park spend

on its website?

Website As Blog


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DoylestownDogPark.com


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Transparency

From the earliest stages of the Dog Park Committee, every meeting,event, decision, or news item was posted on our social networks and the

website. Decisions were only made at meetings!

Were

Approved!Social Media allowed for

REALTIME

updates from meetings!

Transparency = Engagement & Loyalty


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Approval!


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Social

Tactic

Document Sharing

The Power of Scribd.com!

Free

Allows For Embeddable Documents Of Any Kinds

Great For SEO Documents are searchable

Sharing Functionality Built In (Volunteers could print on own)

How do we share presentations and

important documents with our constituency?


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Long Term Engagement

Multiple CREATIVE EVENTS allow us to engage our growing constituency:

Created Buzz On and Offline

Utilized Our Growing Social Media Network

Partnered With Local Businesses

Gave Other Businesses Incentive To Partner With Us

Allowed us to accept smaller donations

Our largest donor ($50,000) attended every

event before APPROACHING US about donating!


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Friend-Raisers & FUNdraisers

Invited to have fundraising booths at about 10 different eventsthat others organized (P & A Puppy Fair, Bark for Life, AnimalLifeline Puppy Paws at Puck, Doylestown Arts Fest, A-Day, etc.)

Over the course of 3 years, we organized about 30 individualfundraising events PLUS March Muttness which had 10 eventsand 10 percentage of promotions during the month ofMarch

Events are a LOT of work, usually for NOT a lot of money, butthey are worth it because they help build awareness, aconstituency and momentum for your cause.

We used flyers, press releases and email newsletters, but wereally drove fundraising with social media.

Be Creative and Accessible!


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Types Of Events Bark About the Park Community Presentations

Township Presentations


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Yappy Hours


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Doggie Ice Cream Social


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March Muttness

In March of 2011, after 2 years of hard work and meetings

with Township and County officials, we got approval to use 3

acres of County land leased to the Township. We knew that

we were going to be presenting to get final approval from the

Township in March, so we organized a month long awareness

and fundraising campaign called March Muttness.

Up until this point, none of our fundraisers had made a ton of

money (Anywhere from $100 to $1000) because they were

really more of Friend-raisers to build awareness andcommunity support of the dog park. Now that we had a plan

and approval to go for it, the REAL fundraising could begin!

We raised over $5,000 during March Muttness!


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The Dog Park is Everywhere! Screen shot of life on the leash pic with all the paws in the

side window

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1015012788243868

0&set=a.10150110250748680.294011.115845948679&type=3&

theater


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March Muttness


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Share Interactions


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Tweetup & More


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Multi-Level Fundraising Plan

We had a lot of community support and wanted to give

people a wide variety of ways to support the park. We

developed our Dog Park Partners program and did all we

could to push that message out into the community.

In-Kind Services and Materials

Dog Park Partners

Bricks & Pavers

.


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Bricks & Pavers

Through social media, we drove people to public tabling events where we

collected Brick and Paver orders. This was a HUGE success and that is when

we really felt the power of social media. WE DID NOT SEND A MAILING!


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Dog Park Partners


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In Kind Services & Materials

Add pdf of in kind gifts form


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Acknowledgement

Twitter and Facebook

mentions and tagging

Email Thank Yous linking to

supporter websites

All Partners and Supports

posted on website

Both on blog posts andsupport page

Edited Featured Likes

only people who donated

money and services

THX.

Both individual donors and business donors were acknowledged for

their contributions.


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Social

Tactic

Mentions & Tagging

The Power of Location-

Based Tagging! Easy to do

Can include photos

Promotes Engagement

Supports and Gives

Exposure To Your

Partners

Can Help Drive

Awareness Of Future

Events

Is there anything businesses like more than

positive exposure?


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Creating Urgency

Social Media allowed us to create a sense of urgency through

mini-campaigns and deadlines

Money for building

Money for extra expenses

Donations for acknowledgement (prior to opening)


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CrowdsourcingSocial

Tactic

The Power of Feedback

via Facebook Polls!

Allows voting on specific

items (New Logo, T-shirt

Orders, Name Fire

hydrant, etc.)

Shareable

Included in every

Facebook Business Page

Asked people to upload

photos to our page

What does our constituency think?


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ConsistencyThe team was very vigilant in

posting on the blog and socialsites!

Consistent messaging allchannels

Used cross-posting to updateTwitter from Facebook (butstill engaged directly onTwitter)

Posted related material, ifthere was no Dog Park News,to maintain engagement

Share something fromanother non-profits

Upload as our own, but givecredit, and take advantage ofshares


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Personal Attachment

Social Media works best on an individual level, and Kelcey

became the personal voice for the dog park.

Single voice provide consistency

Tweeted from animal events she attended with her other job

Other team members still had access to profiles

Did not start multiple profiles we couldnt support


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Whats next?

Well, there was a really cool dog beach Patches enjoyed in

Maryland ;)


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Join us June 30 -- Pup Crawl! Our 2nd Annual Dog Days of Summer Pub Crawl is Saturday

June 30!

Last year we raised over $5,000 by selling Bricks and Pavers,

T-shirt Sales, & Percentage of Donations by bars


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Connect with us! DoylestownDogPark.com

@dtowndogpark

Facebook.com/DoylestownDogPark

[email protected]

SanoAgency.com

@sanoagency

Facebook.com/SanoAgency

[email protected]

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