Power To Be Adventure Therapy Social Media CampaignCOMM 330Team 7 Date

CJ Bungay Grace Campbell Nicholas White Max von Kleist

Introduction

Challenges faced by non-profit organizations are largely resource-based. 46% of non-profits claim that finding the financial resources to accomplish their missions is their primary concern, but another common concern is how to find the human resources needed to staff non-profit operations (Coffman, 2005). According to the most recent Stats Canada report on giving and volunteering, almost 23 million Canadians 84% of populationdonated money to non-profits and charitable organizations but only 46% donated their time through volunteer work, a small minority of which, the top 10% of volunteers, provided over half of total hours (Statistics Canada, 2007). A recent report on the National Survey of Nonprofit and Voluntary Organizations in Canada claims that virtually all nonprofit and voluntary organizations rely on volunteers to some degree, and more than half rely solely on volunteers to fulfill their mission. (Statistics Canada, 2005). Thus, without the unpaid service of volunteers, many non-profits could not exist. These volunteers enrich the non-profit communities by sharing not only their time, but also their

experiences, ideas, and expertise with organizations, fellow volunteers, and non-profit beneficiaries. As a non-profit, Power To Be struggles to gain the financial and human resources to operate, particularly now with current economic instability and reduced corporate charitable contributions. While Power To Be holds high-earning financial fundraisers each year, its volunteer recruitment program is less developed. Attracting volunteers, particularly long-term ones, can be difficult for non-profits in Victoria and Vancouver due to the prevalence of non-profits competing for volunteers and difficulty reaching preferred audiences with Power To Be's key message of "Help Us Make A Difference." Current efforts to attract volunteers could be enhanced through an updated social media campaign and cohesive, consistent, and audience-specific messaging. Through this, Power To Be has the opportunity to deliver its call-out for volunteers with increased clarity, and a potentially increase its volunteer base.

Research/Audience

Data Aggregation/Research Methodology

Using the social bookmarking tool Delicious, 250 RSS feeds related to Power To Be and their values were aggregated into a Google Reader account. A random sample of 50 was then taken by selecting every 20th feed and inputting them into a spreadsheet. From there, the feeds were categorized to identify the major themes within the content. Five major themes were found : Volunteerism Outdoor Recreation Recreation Therapy Youth Outreach Nature Therapy

Data Aggregation/Research Methodology Continued

The five themes found throughout the discourse related to the adventure therapy community (volunteerism, youth outreach, recreation therapy, nature therapy, outdoor recreation) were inputted into Google Trends to decipher which themes are trending most frequently in the community.

Using the Rule of Five, the three trends including and above the median (youth outreach--0.30) were used to conduct audience research.

Identifying the Audience

Through the data aggregation of over 250 feeds and an analysis of top blogs on applicable issues to Power To Be's volunteer challenges, we have identified possible audiences. These consist of the following groups, the first three of which are the segmented audiences: Greater Vancouver and Victoria volunteer communities Greater Vancouver and Victoria outdoor communities Youth Outdoor non-profit organizations Current and potential Power To Be staff, volunteers, and participants Considering that the segmented audiences are Vancouver and Victoria's volunteer and outdoors communities, as well as youth, the following are value profiles of each group, in order to inform the tone, content, strategies, and messaging of the campaign. See next page.

Audience Values
Volunteer Communities:
Altruism Giving back directly to both geographic and social communities Community development Youth and family support Chance to make a difference Chance to work directly with those in need Well-structured volunteer opportunities Healing power of giving back

Outdoor Communities:
Access to outdoor recreation Time spent outdoors Sharing outdoor experiences with others Opportunity to be active both physically and within the community Healing power of nature

Youth:
Require service learning experience Looking to add volunteer experience to resumes Adventurous/thrill seakers Energetic Social media savvy Visually stimulated

Research Findings

Volunteerism
A strong theme in the discourse of recruiting and retaining volunteers is how to provide appropriate and tangible incentives; bloggers in the volunteer community emphasize the importance of volunteer recognition, tangible incentives, and the emotional benefit to becoming a volunteer. The benefits of volunteering go beyond helping others and improving the community. While the volunteer experience is selfless, it often has other benefits. The bloggers at the volunteering and service blog point out that volunteering can help advance ones career. They say, you should be volunteering if you have plans to attend college. Admissions offices love to see a solid history of volunteer work on your resume. (Admin, 2011). Volunteering provides a place to practice skills in a low risk environment before heading into the workplace. No matter what an individuals talents and abilities are, there is a place for them in the volunteer community. The volunteering and service blog says, You could combine your artistic abilities with other interests by volunteering with virtually any non-profit organization by helping to create pamphlets or websites. (Admin, 2011). Skills will not only be appreciated, they will be developed by practicing them for a good cause. A theme that emerges amongst volunteer blogs is the volunteer profile, or volunteer spotlight where one volunteer is highlighted on their blog. Profiling one volunteer shows that the organization appreciates those who give their time. The volunteer profile often ends with a call to action for others to sign up to volunteer. Ruth Mckenzie president and CEO of Volunteer Canada emphasizes the importance of recognizing volunteers. She says, Its important that we take time to express our gratitude to all volunteers. The most effective way to thank them for their great efforts is to highlight how their voluntary contributions are making a positive impact. (CEO of Volunteer Canada, 2012). This is easy to do through spotlighting or profiling your volunteers. Not only does the topic of volunteerism trend in the online community of wilderness therapy non profits, it is a common trend amoungst all non profits. Volunteers are changingit is much more difficult to recruit and retain volunteers for any non profit. Ruth Mackenzie, President and CEO of volunteer Canada says,The traditional view of volunteers as service providers no longer resonates with all Canadians. (CEO of Volunteer Canada, 2012). How to recruit new volunteeers and retain current ones is a hot topic and open to many different solutions.

Outdoor Recreation
While originally a term for leisure nature activities, outdoor recreation now encompasses a growing non-profit sector. Organizations within the sector are dedicated to providing participants with opportunities to gain life and leadership skills while engaging in outdoor activities. In her recent blog post, Christian outdoor leadership blogger Ashley Denton explains the 5 Essentials of an Authentic Wilderness Experience: Humility, primitiveness, chucking the clock, solitude, and caring for someone besides yourself (Denton, 2012). Each of these essentials serves to remove participants from their city selves and immerse them into an outdoor experience that seems timeless, isolated, and encouraging of co-dependency. In its blog post titled Adventure Therapy Services, OMNI youth services describe how adolescents can benefit from the intense experiences of an adventure excursion. Participants learn to work with others, improve team leadership skills, develop trust, increase self esteem,[and] experience a sense of accomplishment and achievement (Omni, 2011). While the preceding two posts focus on the situational characteristics and ideal outcomes of outdoor therapy, a blog post titled Exploring the Idea of the Third Place, discusses sociologist Dr. Ray Oldenburgs argument for the social value of creating a space separate from home (1st Place) and work (2nd Place). Oldenburg claims that social well-being and psychological health depend upon community, which relies on a Third Place that can assist in bringing you to the outdoors, and other places where you are a participant in enjoying the company of those around you (Brack, 2012). As a trending topic in the online non-profit outdoor and volunteer community, outdoor recreation is largely described as a positive and potentially life and community altering initiative. While content varies widely, the loose consensus is that access to outdoor adventure provides an escape from civilization, and community and personal development which could not take place without an extreme shift in environment.

Youth Outreach
Youth involvement, whether as program participants or program volunteers, permeates online discussions regarding recreationbased non-profit initiatives, and demonstrates the not-forprofit sectors dependence on active, engaged youth. Non-profit heavyweight, United Way, and Nike, Inc. recently announced a joint initiative to engage youth across the [United States] in reading, tutoring and mentoring activities (Cobb, 2012). Their goal is to create volunteer opportunities for student-youth to act as ambassadors in schools and communities, and to meet a rising demand among youth for chances to give back throughout the year, not only at athletic camps during the summer months. The University of British Columbias (UBC) online Centre for Student Involvement further demonstrates the demand for youth volunteers among non-profits through postings for youth volunteer opportunities. For example, recent postings include a call-out for youth participants for the following initiatives: To sign-up for six-month development projects focused on environment, health, or gender equity (Marie-Claude, 2012); To volunteer at CampOUT, UBCs summer camp for queer, trans, two-spirit, questioning, & allied youth, and help create an empowering camping experience by providing practical social, spiritual, educational, health, and leadership tools in an inspiring and welcoming space for BCs queer youth and their friends (Campout, 2012). Proving the market for recreation-based non-profits is growing thus it is more competitive to recruit and retain volunteers for one non-profit. In an article titled 6 Ways to Get Busy College Students Involved in Service, on Tobis Nonprofit Management Blog, Tobi Johnson provides six suggestions for non-profits looking to engage students as volunteers. Citing the fact that in 2010, 8.3 million charity-minded young people (age 16-24) dedicated 844 million hours of service to communities across the [United States of America], she argues that there is a well of passion and energy for volunteerism among youth (Johnson, 2012). While the content regarding youth involvement in non-profit initiatives is primarily framed as rewarding for both the organizations and individuals involved, the unspoken trend is a demand for unpaid youth labour among non-profits. Whether sanctioned by large organizations such as United Way and Nike or by smaller programs through UBC, content clearly indicates that non-profits rely on the active recruitment of unpaid youth to provide services and opportunities, often to less fortunate youth.

Conclusion

The data collected from the 250 aggregated RSS feeds from a community of volunteers and non-profits related to Power To Be has revealed three major themes that reoccur. Those themes are: Volunteerism Outdoor Recreation Youth Opportunities These sources showed the community is concerned with recruiting and retaining volunteers with creative incentive and benefits. The community is also concerned about educating the public on Outdoor Recreation as therapy. The community prefers to see images, videos, and text in the form of testimonials from participants of the programs. Power To Be can benefit by utilizing social media platforms to spread their message.

The Campaign

Campaign MessageAn Overview

While temporary and one-time volunteers benefit non-profit organizations with their time and efforts, non-profit organizations require a consistent, quality network of volunteers in order to best serve their communities. The time and energy requirements of volunteer work often outweigh the perceived benefits of volunteerism in the minds of potential volunteers. Also, without consistent messaging across social media platforms, potential volunteers might find it difficult to connect with the activities and values of non-profits that require their service. Many individuals decide not to donate their resources without first gaining a clear understanding of what their roles and rewards might be and without a clear understanding of an organization such as Power To Bes mission and accomplishments. The goal is to provide potential volunteers with this clear understanding and emphasis the low pressure of attending a volunteer orientation.

Volunteering with Power To Be is easy and worth it. In two days you can be ready to change lives.
JUNE 8-9, 2012 is the next Power To Be Vancouver volunteer orientation. The event will cover paper work, history, mission, disability awareness and etiquette on the Friday evening, then all day training on the Saturday.

Implementation Plan
The social media campaign would utilize Power To Be's current social media platforms to potentially reach previously specified audiences. Using the findings of our research, the campaign's goal would be to increase awareness of Power To Be's volunteer orientation events. Power To Be's social media campaign would allow the organization to build upon its existing online presence and interactions, and potentially add, and increase the usage of, certain platforms.

Blog

Broadly-supported blog platforms, such as tumblr.com, wordpress.com, and blogger.com, allow users to leverage influence within existing user-bases, provide structure for content creation, and guide users to tag content. Through the frequent and consistent blogging of content, users have the potential to specifically target preferred audiences. Blogging platforms also provide users with the ability to track how audiences discover and access blog content.

Facebook

As a social networking system that nearly half of Canada is on, Facebook offers opportunities for discussion, event promotion, and visual representation, if used consistently and strategically. Events pages can be used to inform followers of upcoming events. Facebook offers a wide reach to multiple audiences potentially reaching new volunteers. Individuals are also much more likely to volunteer for an organziation of they can see the types of activities they would be part ofFacebook is an excellent tool for providing this through its photo sharing capabilities.

Twitter

As a real-time, free, interactive service, Twitter provides a forum in which individuals and organizations can build and share their online brands while interacting with a broader community. Through the use of 140 character direct messages and "tweets," users can both build direct connections and broadcast messages. Through the use of hashtags, which are words or phrases preceded by the "#" sign, users can also tag content so that it can be found by other users searching for similar topics. Conversely, users can search out hashtags that represent topics of interest and become connected with other users who express the same interests and values. Hashtags offer a tracking system allowing Power To Be to evaluate the reach of the message. As a micro-blogging platform, Twitter provides an opportunity for users to not only connect with similar users, but also drives traffic to content, such as blogs or facebook pages.

YouTube

YouTube is a website that allows users to share video content within a broader community of both YouTube users and the general public. The site allows users to search for videos based on content (largely through titles) and to "follow" the video content of other users.

GOOD. IS

GOOD.IS allows users to aggregate information through the collaboration of small businesses, and non-profit organizations so that users can spot developing trends within the non-profit community. Topics include current news, business, culture, design, technology, and other socially-oriented schools of thought. The primary topics are broken into categories to demonstrate the most utilized posts. On every specific post there is link to the authors profile. There, a list is presented of all the posts generated by that specific author. This list is designated as finds. Furthermore, there is also a window to display the UPS of a each post. This is a voting system to validate approval of an individual post from other users in the community. Lastly, there is a comment window to see constructive criticism and recommended links from other users to promote or correct the premise of the post. On the homepage, there is also a search engine capability that allows a user to hunt for any small business or non-profit organization in the system.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is an online resource composed of aggregated feeds constructed by multiple users. This online platform allows content to be distributed around the globe through a networking system of data and feeds. The information presented in this online community is extensive, including definitions, biographies, and detailed explanations of past events. This community presents data with both a scholarly and nonacademic perspective. Every user has the potential to correct, or add to current data indicating currently developing topics. Wikipedia also provides a search engine tool to encompass all data compiled under this community umbrella.

Success Matrix: Key Performance Indicators

Blog Post Frequency Target Comments/ Engagement Per Post Target Number of Subscribers (3 months) Views/Impressions (3 months) Inbound Links (6 months) 4 articles/week

Facebook 6-8 posts/day

Twitter 10-12 tweets/day

YouTube 2 video/month

GOOD.IS 2 posts (finds) /week

4-6 comments/ article

4-8 comments/post 3-5 comments/post, 10 comments/video 2 comments/post, 3-5 UPS/post 4 re-tweets/day

150 subscribers

900 Likes

1000 followers

200 subscribers

N/A

500 Rank Avg.

N/A

N/A

500 views/video

N/A

1500

N/A

N/A

N/A

50

For this organization to successfully maximize its multimedia footprint, it is suggested that it implements a regime of constant updates, downloads, and data entries. It is recommended that Power To Be perform quarterly evaluation of their online resources and adapt accordingly to new media trends to enable a readily available resource for devoted supporters and potential clients.

The following logic tree illustrates strategies to be considered during the initial 3-month implementation phase, along with some options for maximizing the performance of each social media channel in the instances of both successfully and unsuccesfully meeting the target goals laid out previously in the success matrix: 3-Month Social Media Campaign Strategy Tree

Blog

Facebook

Twitter

YouTube

GOOD.IS

150 Subscribers

900 Likes

1000 Followers

200 Subscribers, 500 views/video

3-5 UPS/post

Continue 4 articles/ week

Increase article frequency to 5/week

Continue 6-8 posts/ day and comment responses

Increase promotion on other platforms to stimulate traffic

Continue 10-12 tweets/ day

Follow similar people Increase tweets to 12-15/day

Continue 2 video/ month, respond to comments

Comment on other videos, subscribe to related users

Continue 2 posts/ week, respond to comments

Increase post frequency to 3/week

1500 inbound links

Increase promotion of blog on other platforms

Continue posts and responses to all comments

Increase post frequency to 8-10/day - continue promotion

Continue tweets and retweets tweet @ influential people

Increase promotion of blog on other platorms

Promote YouTube channel on other platforms

Increase promotion on other platforms

50 Inbound links

Promote posts on other channels

Continue 4-5 posts/week and responses to comments, maintain cross-platform promotion

Continue 6-10 posts/day, respond to comments daily, maintain crossplatform promotion

Continue 10-15 tweets/day, retweets, and mentions, maintain crossplatform promotion

Continue posting 2-3 videos/month, interaction with related users, maintain cross-platform promotion

Maintain a minimum of 8-12 posts/month, respond to comments, interact with related users, maintain crossplatform promotion

References
Admin, (2011). Adventure Therapy Services. OMNI Youth Services. Retrieved February 28, 2012, from http://www.omniyouth.org/programs-services/adventure-therapy-services Admin, (2011). Benefits of Volunteering in the Community. Volunteering and Service Blog. Retrieved February 28, 2012, from pitchin.org2011http://www.pitchin.org/benefits-ofvolunteering-in-the-community.htm Admin, (2011). Put Your Creative Side to Work by Volunteering. Volunteering and Service Blog. Retrieved February 28, 2012, from http://www.pitchin.org/put-your-creative-side-towork-by-volunteering.htm Brack, R. (2012). Exploring the Idea of the Third Place. River House Outdoor Program. Retrieved February 28, 2012, from http://eugeneoutdoorprogram.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/exploring-the-idea-of-the-third-place/ Campout: Leadership Oppritunities, (2012). University of British Columbia. Retrieved February 28, 2012 from http://www.involvement.ubc.ca/2012/02/23/campout-leadershipopportunities/ CEO of Volunteer Canada, (2012). About National Volunteer Week. Retrieved February 28, 2012, from, http://nationalvolunteerweek.ca/about-nationalvolunteerweek/message-from-ruth-mackenzie-president-and-ceo-of- volunteer-canada? Cobb, M. (2012). United Way and NIKE, Incs Elite Youth Basketball Partner to Promote Volunteering. Live United. United Way. Retrieved February 28, 2012, http://liveunited.org/blog/entry/united-way-and-nike-incs-elite-youth-basketball-partner-to-promote-voluntee/ Coffman, S. (2005). Nonprofits' Three Greatest Challenges. Guide Star. Retrieved, March 2, 2012, from, http://www2.guidestar.org/rxa/news/articles/2005/nonprofitsthree-greatest-challenges.aspx?articleId=780 Denton, A. (2012). 5 Essentials of an Authentic Wilderness Experience. Christian Outdoor Leadership. Retrieved February 28, 2012, http://www.outdoorleaders.com/5-essentials-of-anauthentic-wilderness-experience/ Johnson, T. (2012). 6 Ways to Get Busy College Students Involved in Service. Tobis nonprophit Management Blog. Retrieved February 28, 2012, http://tobijohnson.typepad.com/tobisblog/2012/02/6-ways-to-get-busy-college-students-involved-in-service-.html Marie-Claude, B. (2012). Canada World Youth is Recruiting for 2012/13. University of British Columbia. Retrieved February 28, 2012, from http://www.involvement.ubc.ca/2012/02/10/canada-world-youth-is-recruiting-for-201213/ Statisics Canada. (2007). Caring Canadians Involved Canadians. Highlights from the 2007 Canada Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating. Retrieved, March 2, 2012, from, http://www.givingandvolunteering.ca/files/giving/en/csgvp_highlights_2007.pdf Statistics Canada. (2005). Cornerstones of Community: Highlights of National Survey of Nonprofit and Voluntary Organizations. Small Business and Special Survey Division Business and Trade Statistics Field. Retrieved, March 2, 2012, from, http://library.imaginecanada.ca/files/nonprofitscan/en/nsnvo/nsnvo_report_english.pdf