Doylestown Dog Park

Social Media for Nonprofits SoMeBizLife Conference 2012 @dtowndogpark @sanoagency

About Kelcey & Joe

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.

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.

Isn't it wonderful that none of us need wait a moment before starting to change the world.
-Anne Frank (1929 1945)

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)

About Doylestown Dog Park

Initial Group About To Disband 2009 Borough Meeting Formation of Friends Of Doylestown Dog Park

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

Where We Stand (May 2012)

Money Raised: $150,000+ The People: 3 main drivers, 10-person core committee, 30person 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!

Doylestown Dog Park

Doylestown Dog Park

Keys To Success
1. Targeted Demographic 2. Grassroots Campaigning - Building A Constituency & Support from our Community and Decision Makers 3. Transparency 4. 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

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

Dogographics
Its 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 Expenditures Year Billion 2011 $50.96 2004 $34.4 1994 $17 Pet Calculator via AVMA.org Doylestown Borough has:

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 by Mashable as having more social media fans than many major media outlets (http://mashable.com/2011/07/12/animals-socialmedia/).

1 in 10 Pets have a social profile on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, according to a recent study done by PetPlan (pet insurance company)

Dogographics

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.

Social Tactic

Website As Blog
How much did Doylestown Dog Park spend on its website?

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

DoylestownDogPark.com

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

Approval!

Social Tactic

Document Sharing
How do we share presentations and important documents with our constituency?

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)

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!

Friend-Raisers & FUNdraisers

Invited to have fundraising booths at about 10 different events that others organized (P & A Puppy Fair, Bark for Life, Animal Lifeline Puppy Paws at Puck, Doylestown Arts Fest, A-Day, etc.) Over the course of 3 years, we organized about 30 individual fundraising events PLUS March Muttness which had 10 events and 10 percentage of promotions during the month of March Events are a LOT of work, usually for NOT a lot of money, but they are worth it because they help build awareness, a constituency and momentum for your cause. We used flyers, press releases and email newsletters, but we really drove fundraising with social media. Be Creative and Accessible!

Types Of Events
Bark About the Park Community Presentations

Township Presentations

Yappy Hours

Doggie Ice Cream Social

Paintin Paws

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 and community 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!

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

March Muttness

Share Interactions

Tweetup & More

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
.

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!

Dog Park Partners

In Kind Services & Materials

Add pdf of in kind gifts form

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 and support page

THX.

Both individual donors and business donors were acknowledged for their contributions.

Edited Featured Likes only people who donated money and services

Social Tactic

Mentions & Tagging

Is there anything businesses like more than positive exposure?

The Power of LocationBased Tagging!

Easy to do Can include photos Promotes Engagement Supports and Gives Exposure To Your Partners Can Help Drive Awareness Of Future Events

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)

Social 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

Crowdsourcing
What does our constituency think?

Consistency
The team was very vigilant in posting on the blog and social sites! Consistent messaging all channels Used cross-posting to update Twitter from Facebook (but still engaged directly on Twitter) Posted related material, if there was no Dog Park News, to maintain engagement
Share something from another non-profits
Upload as our own, but give credit, and take advantage of shares

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

Whats next?
Well, there was a really cool dog beach Patches enjoyed in Maryland ;)

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

Connect with us!

DoylestownDogPark.com @dtowndogpark Facebook.com/DoylestownDogPark doylestowndogpark@gmail.com SanoAgency.com @sanoagency Facebook.com/SanoAgency joe@sanoagency.com WordPress Meetup
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