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Health & Fitness

Rainbow Village Embraces Social Media

What makes Rainbow Village such an amazing nonprofit organization, at least in my mind, is that they care every bit as much about you, their supporters, as they do the families they are assisting. They understand that without you, none of their efforts would be possible. The relationships that the Rainbow Village staff have built with their community was evident several years ago when the company I work for, Convergent Nonprofit Solutions, began working on the Capital Campaign  to raise the funding needed to build their new campus. One of the primary reasons that we were able secure the necessary investments was that Rainbow Village had a strong network of supporters that knew about their work, understood the impact of their work, and were committed to seeing them succeed.

After all of the hard work that was put in to creating the new campus, Rainbow Village needed to ensure they could continue to grow by expanding their network of supporters, strengthening their bonds with the community, communicating the positive impacts they were facilitating, and most importantly, thanking their supporters as often as possible. That’s quite a to-do list when you add it on top of all of the day to day activities that keep things running around there! So how could they possibly do all of those things well? Via social media, of course!

Prior to 2011, Rainbow Village was pretty inactive on social media. Sure they had Facebook page and a Twitter account, but no one really knew how to use them. Hashtags were a scary mystery, Facebook was only updated once every couple of weeks, and the members of their online community weren’t very engaged. While this seemed like a fairly minor concern, as a member of the Millennial Generation, to me it was a huge waste of a powerful resource. But what exactly would “utilizing social media” mean for Rainbow Village?

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That’s the question that Nancy Yancey, Sandra Cathy, and I had to figure out. We asked ourselves, “What do we want people to know about Rainbow Village, and more importantly, what do people want to know about us?” The answers seemed pretty simple: We want people to know how much their support means to the families here and we want them to know the different ways they can help, and we believe that our supporters wants to know what sort of impact their efforts are making on the lives of the families we serve. So, with those three areas of focus in mind, Rainbow Village dedicated themselves to sharing updates with their community daily and to really work at engaging their community as well.

Their efforts are working. From June 2011 to June 2013 they have over double the number of followers on Facebook, going from just over 200 followers to having just recently crossed the 600 followers mark, and people aren’t just clicking “like” and then disappearing never to be seen again, they are actually engaging in the content! Updates about new families joining the RV community, the success stories of past and current program members, and special volunteer stories are the post topics that get the most love from RV’s Facebook community. Facebook has also become one of the primary means of communication for Rainbow Village to share the details of upcoming special events and for thanking their volunteers and investors. Private messaging on Facebook has also become a new tool for families to reach out to RV in an attempt to learn more about their programs, and for volunteers to learn about how to get involved. Thanks to their Facebook efforts, Rainbow Village is closer to their community than ever.

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Do you follow Rainbow Village’s Facebook page? If so, we’d love to hear your feedback. What posts do you enjoy most, what information would you like to see more or less of, and what else can we do to make you feel more connected? Your opinions do matter, as our social media efforts are focused on engaging you, so please let us know your thoughts. Most importantly, keep coming back! We are always sharing new information and trying new things (have you seen that we are now doing a “fan of the week” feature?!) to keep you informed, keep you engaged, and keep you confident that we fulfilling our duties to the families we serve, our community, and to you.

 





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