Day of Caring tech coaching sessions

As a part of United Way King County’s Day of Caring, NPower Northwest organized a Tech Coaching day and matched 23 nonprofits with 25 social media experts for individualized sessions.  As VISTA volunteers, we were delighted to get out into the community and observe several of these sessions as they happened all over Seattle on September 16, 2011.  Here are a few highlights from those visits:

• Terri Ann Johnson (@ann_terriann), a recent Seattle transplant from Minnesota and Social Media & Events Coordinator for Bill the Butcher, worked with Ann Erickson, Office Manager/Social Justice Advocate for The Church Council of Greater Seattle. Terri and Ann started off by using an editorial calender activity provided by NPower Northwest to help Ann think about her organization's specific social media goals and determine which goals were or were not being met. Ann had two primary goals for her session with Terri; the first was to establish guidelines for staff/volunteers in regards to curating the Church Council of Greater Seattle’s online presence. This can often be a challenge for nonprofits who may have a wide variety of voices from the organization interested in engaging with social media. Ann’s second goal was to focus on finding ways to increase engagement between her organization and its constituents. Overall, both Terri and Ann enjoyed their time working together and discussing the many ways social media can be used in the nonprofit world.
• At El Centro de la Raza in Beacon Hill, Jess Estrada (@jessestrada) from Banyan Branch conducted a social media audit with El Centro staff members Yuni Castorena, Tyrone Hall-Dale, and Deanah Watson. Jess was trying to get a sense of the organization's audience, communication channels, and current strategy. She explained how their website can work in concert with social media technologies - press releases can be uploaded to the website and Twitter and Facebook posts can point readers to El Centro de la Raza online updates. Jess also pointed out that media organizations will often solicit stories from the Twitter community, emphasizing the potential for El Centro to capitalize on those opportunities to increase awareness of its vital programs and advocacy efforts.
• Back near the NPower office in the Central District, Dave Sharp (@davidlsharp) from College Success Foundation was consulting with Jane Griffin, Rebecca Kuenzel, and Cicely Nordness from Catholic Community Services Youth Tutoring Program (CCS YTP).  After a lot of information sharing from the YTP group, Dave drew out some strategies to help them find ways to share success stories that could inspire volunteers and donors. Dave refrained from urging the nonprofit staff to lock in on one particular tool. Instead, he recommended allowing the content to determine the channel: if the group had a compelling video of the organization's work they could consider posting it on YouTube; first-person accounts from students who had been helped by the program could be channeled into a blog. He emphasized being clear on goals and crafting a sound strategy before jumping on board the social media bandwagon haphazardly.
• Up north in the University District, Teen Feed received awesome tutelage from industry expert Maren Finzer (@marenfinzer). As an organization that relies heavily on volunteers to serve homeless youth, they focused most of their time on the social aspects of their web presence in an effort to reach out those in need and those who wished to volunteer.
• Elsewhere in the U District, Burke Museum staff was receiving some excellent ideas from Zan McColloch-Lussier of Mixtape Communications (@zanarama) regarding their website and blog. Their discussion covered targeting specific audiences and determining which channels were used when discussing events and new blog posts. The recommendation was not only to make small site change, but also to track the effectiveness of those site changes to ensure future growth. Another interesting topic that was discussed at the Burke was the idea of utilizing eye tracking software (a resource that a University of Washington organization would likely have access to) to determine the effectiveness of their website layout.
  

All the sessions involved a lot of focus and excitement. The day culminated in a celebration with several thousand people in attendance at the after party at Century Link Field, where we met the mascot for the Seattle Seahawks, Blitz:

- Stephen Eggers, Elissa Thomas, and Abby Nafziger