Archive for November, 2008

Posting and Sharing Photos online

Posted on November 18th, 2008 by Kevin Martone – 4 Comments

As we’ve discussed before, the internet offers lots of great opportunities to share your nonprofit’s personal stories, including text, video, and photographs. Flickr.com has become one of the most popular photo sharing sites online. It allows anyone to upload their pictures for free, and it also has lots of great tools for sharing and displaying those photos.

The most important feature in Flickr and similar sites is the tag. Tags allow users to attach keywords to their photos so they can easily be searched by anyone. Flickr also offers the option to create and share a slideshow of photos based on selected tags. For example, I searched the tags “URJ Eisner” and clicked the “Slideshow” link to create a slideshow in Flickr; a number of pictures from their recent 50th Anniversary celebration can be found there. Then, I clicked the “Share” link to automatically create a link to the slideshow or even special code that can be used to embed the slidshow on any website or blog. If you scroll down this blog, you’ll see the resulting slideshow on the right side of the page.

Nonprofits can ask their constituents to post pictures to Flickr with specific tags on all of them (like “URJ Eisner” or “Tamarack Camps Alumni Day 2008″) so that they can easily be searched and aggregated. Also, a nonprofit can create a Flickr photo Group that constituents can add their photos to. Camps can upload their own photos to the group as well. This may include old archived photos from the camp or from camp yearbooks that have been scanned.

Are you using Flickr or another Photo Sharing site? If so, how?

Contests – channeling the “basic human urge to compete”

Posted on November 3rd, 2008 by Kevin Martone – Be the first to comment
Photo by Willow&Monk (Flickr.com)

Have you run any contests to build community, engage your alumni , or to grow your alumni database? Wild Apricot’s Nonprofit Technology Blog posted recently about how contests can help nonprofits get buzz and build community. They specifically mention three benefits of running contests: Attention, Engagement, and Word-of-Mouth Publicity. Contests offer a way to reconnect and communicate with your alumni and other constituents. As the blog post states, contests tap into a “basic human urge to compete.” If the camp offers fun prizes like camp t-shirts or inclusion in the next eNewsletter, a contest can bring even more interest.
Some specific contest ideas could include:
  • Post old pictures from camp on your website or blog – whoever can name the people in the picture are entered into a raffle for a prize.
  • Best camp memory or photo – they can be featured in a future newsletter.
  • Register the most new alumni for the camp eNewsletter – the person who recruits the most new alumni wins!
Be creative. Each camp has its own unique culture and history; consider contests that will tap into the alumni’s emotional attachment to the camp.
Contests can be run right on a camp blog (entries via the comments for the post) or via email. And volunteers can be in charge of reviewing contest entries and selecting winners. Little expense or time is required by the camp staff if the contest is managed effectively.
Have you run successful contests in the past? If so, what worked? What didn’t? How did you measure success? Let us know in the comments below.