Communication Audit

The Salvation Army

The Salvation Army is a Christian based organization motivated by the words in the

Bible to make a difference in the world and aid to human needs. The Salvation Army was

founded in 1865 by William Booth, and his wife Catherine Booth who were inspired to help

those in need throughout London. Now today, The Salvation Army has branches in over 100

countries. However, The Salvation Army in of Alamance County is rather recent, and was

created in 2016. This Salvation Army in Alamance County is led by David Eggleton who has

years of experience working with The Salvation Army, from his past involvement with this

organization in New Hampshire. The Salvation Army LINCS Coordinator is Emily Cohen, who

is a student at Elon University. The Salvation Army spends days assisting local communities,

and strive to alleviate poverty struggles. Their mission is to connect with people in need,

volunteers, and donors to support one another throughout our lifetimes. The purpose of their

international organization is to undertake humanitarian work. They do this through thrift stores,

fundraisers, food pantries, rental assistance and red donation kettles. They are an evangelical

Christian Church and will do all things in the name of Christ. They achieve repentance through

welfare, and this is imperative for our salvation.

In February, our team was made aware of the audit and immediately started our SWOT

analysis. Initially, this work was done during our class time and then continued outside of class

independently. In late February, we made our first contact with a member of Salvation Army,

David Eggleton, who turned out to be the Store Manager. We talked to him on speaker phone as

a group for roughly an hour. During the call he recommended we speak to Lieutenant Smith
regarding the Salvation Army’s social media, and we were able to interview him the following

day. In early March we made our first visit to the Salvation Army Thrift Store as a team. We

discussed our plan with Mr. Eggleton for an hour, and then spent another hour touring the

facility. A few weeks later, a few members of the team returned to the store to help Mr. Eggleton

learn how to use Instagram and talk some more about how we could support them. Finally, in

early May Mr. Eggleton came to campus to meet with our group, discuss our findings and see

our recommendations.

The methodology used to conduct our audit was mainly observation and interview. As

stated previously, our team visited the store multiple times and observed that merchandise was

consistently being cycled through, employees were in a perky mood, and there were always a

decent number of customers no matter what time of day we were there. We paid attention to

what kinds of signage they used to promote sales and make announcements, and concluded that

they should put more time in the graphic design of those signs to make them more effective. We

took lots of photos on-site and recorded our interviews with Mr. Eggleton through the voice

memos application and notetaking. The information gathered through our initial SWOT analysis

is as follows:

The branding and messages across local and national platforms are consistent. Each

media platform matches the other and has the same coloring, text, and graphics. The messages

they are sending to their target audiences are all similar and have the same tone. Their

photography used across these platforms are professional looking and evoke emotion from the

audience.

The published content like personal stories and videos gives a visual to the impact of

volunteering/donating and encourages continuance of these efforts. It shows the reader and
possible volunteers what their work would be affecting and the community goal they would be

adding to. The videos create a way for viewers to see where all these efforts are going and how

much of an impact the Salvation Army has on the surrounding community. Their main source of

personal stories, blog posts, and interview videos are on their website along with some popping

up on their Twitter and Facebook.

The Salvation Army has corporate sponsorships with prestigious companies like

Walmart, Kroger, and UPS. These companies bring attention to the Salvation Army but also help

create awareness for those in the community seeking out these bigger corporations for everyday

needs. Having these bigger corporations sponsor the organization also helps to create interest

from other possible big corporations.

The mailing list is easy to subscribe to on the website and provides a consistent flow of

information. The Salvation Army has a very easy to navigate and find how to get in contact with

the organization if needed. Their mailing list just requests an email and you will receive their

updated news on what is happening not only in the community but at their center.

All initiatives and values align strongly with the Salvation Army’s faith-based mission

statement and have been maintained over time. All of their platforms and news they send out to

corporations and sponsors maintain their same message they are trying to uphold. They are a

community-based organization that has a mission to serve others and help those in need.

Some of the weaknesses for the Salvation Army is that their Instagram is not up to date.

They lack posts that draw attention from viewers and if they do post it is not consistent enough.

David Eggleton, who runs the Instagram account has been starting to understand how to use

Instagram to their benefit more and more. It is a slow work in progress but at the beginning of
the semester it was one of the organization's weaknesses which has now been brought to the

attention of Mr. Eggleton.

There is not a lot of awareness surrounding the different ways to volunteer other than

monetary donations. Their website has not hard to navigate but you can get lost in the multitudes

of pages pretty quickly. It is clean and easy but hard to find the page to make donations as well

as who to get in contact with. There is not one specific person you can get in contact with about

everything. They have different numbers and emails for different things. Even then, there still

aren't any names of who you would be in contact with. It took us multiple tries to finally get in

contact with the right people at Salvation Army.

The Salvation Army has some opportunities we think they should take advantage of.

They need to reach out more within community and more specifically Elon University. There are

many students looking to work with non-profits as well as get in some service hours. The

Salvation Army is an easy access and great opportunity for that. The Salvation Army needs to

find out a way to take these opportunities and reach out to these certain communities because

they would get a lot more volunteers than they do now.

The Salvation Army needs to gear their marketing efforts toward a younger audience in

order to stay relevant as its old donation/volunteer base phases out. Since a lot of their social

media is not up to date, they need to focus their efforts on how to do that in order to reach a

younger audience, specifically students at Elon University. Updating all social media platforms

consistently is free and cheap advertising that reminds target audiences about people in need.

Students at Elon are constantly checking their technology and would pay attention to the

Salvation Army if there was an advertisement or post that popped up on their media platform

timelines.
 In order to further the success of the Salvation Army they should conduct research to find

what has worked for other non-profits in the past and possibly ask previous leaders of those to

join the company. There are many ways to help improve an organization and studying and

researching those other non-profits not only in the Burlington area but in Alamance in general

will help the Salvation Army to see what is working and what is not. It will help shape their

organization and better them as a whole.

Some threats to the Salvation Army are the emergence of websites like Change.org and

GoFundMe. People are inclined to donate to more specific causes and not just the Salvation

Army who serves one bigger cause with smaller ones that aren't as specific. This is an issue

because it will drive away donations especially if these online websites have a much easier to

navigate donation system.

There are also more competitors are taking advantage of the Christmas season of giving.

In addition, exhausting fundraising efforts during that season put a strain on the remainder of the

year. Most people know about the Salvation Army bell ringing and are aware that goes on but

tends to look elsewhere when donating during the Christmas season. The Christmas Season is

one of the most important donation times for the Salvation Army and it tends to bring in a lot of

funds for the organization.

Some potential donors and volunteers may disagree with The Salvation Army’s faith-

based ideals may deter a large number of them from sponsoring or helping to volunteer for the

organization. Their mission and ideals are so specific that it may cause many to turn heads in the

other direction leading them away from helping the surrounding community. In order to draw a

larger crowd, The Salvation Army needs to rework their ideals and mission statement to better

the community and not solely focus on the Christian lifestyle.

 According to the SWOT analysis, the Salvation Army needs to focus on appealing to a

wider audience (specifically the younger crowd), updating social media, and communicating

volunteer opportunities to the community. From an interview with Mr. Eggleton, the store

manager at the Salvation Army Thrift Store in Burlington, NC, we were able to narrow down

determine their main goals as increasing the number of volunteers, selling more valuable items

on Facebook, reaching the Elon community, and creating an active Instagram account.

Our first recommendation that was at the utmost priority was to create a new, fresh

Instagram that is visually appealing and updated with contact information and the latest events or

donation pushes. Consistently using the brand colors in the aesthetic theme for each post would

make the profile more visually appealing. Using the insights that are provided for registered

business profiles in the app, we can post at the optimal times and reach our targeted audience.

We will also connect the Instagram to the Facebook page so that messages can be spread across

all channels.

Our second recommendation is to use Facebook marketplace and The Salvation Army’s

main page to advertise high quality items. The items rarely sell in-store because walk-in

customers are not looking to spend a lot of money in a spontaneous visit. This would reach

potential customers that would be willing to travel to the store for unique items, even those that

have not interacted with the Salvation Army before through Facebook Marketplace.

Our last recommendation is to put on a PR donation event at Elon University. This event

would not only gather donations from students and staff, but also attract volunteers- especially

those that need service hours. The plan would be to set up donation bins or even a truck at a

gathering space on campus, and offer and incentive for donating a certain number of items,

which can be discussed with the University. This is a more distant goal for the Salvation Army as
the semester is coming to an end, but there is definitely time to prepare and advertise over the

summer.

The Salvation Army is a solid non-profit organization reputation-wise, but has room to

grow in terms of modernization for their promotional methods. Our communication team

provided them with a strong foundation of criticism and advice to work with to make

improvements and adapt to a changing target audience of customers, donors, and volunteers over

time.