Social Media Benefits Small Non-Profit ? Case Study | Near Coast ...

Background:

Journey Home Thrift is a non-profit organization that was created in August of 2011. Its purpose is to provide financial support to organizations related to hospice care in New Hampshire such as NHHPCO. Journey Home operates a thrift shop in North Hampton, NH that accepts donated items and then resells them in order to provide this financial support. The non-profit was started with very little capital and had no budget in place for advertising and promotion.

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Objective:

As with any small business, Journey Home Thrift needed to create public awareness to drive traffic through its doors. The restrictive budget required Journey Home?s founder, Janet, to seek an alternative means of promoting her organization. The usual media outlets such as newspapers, radio, and television were far too expensive but Janet learned that she could utilize social media channels for business promotion at a fraction of the cost. The objective wasn?t only to create initial buzz but to also create a community that would provide consistent support and word of mouth promotion.

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Approach:

Consulting with experts from Near Coast Media, Janet concluded that Facebook was the best social media outlet for Journey Home in order to reach her target audience. With a demographic of mainly females from the ages of 25-55, Facebook was a good choice to reach active members and to create a social community. Facebook was also chosen because it was the best option to facilitate sharing the content that would be posted such as pictures of donations for sale and of events happening at the store.

Janet had a simple and inexpensive welcome tab created for her Facebook business page that matched her branding and encouraged visitors to ?like? the page. The page was also set up with all of her relevant business information such as hours, contact, information, purpose of the non-profit, and location of the thrift shop. This page was a great place for the organization to facilitate discussion aboutit?s operation and develop support from the community.

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Business Page Uses:

• Posting pictures of donated items that are for sale, updates daily
• Updates on the wall when donations are low and more items are needed
• Updates on the wall asking for specific item types to be donated
• Special Events that are happening at the thrift shop for holidays or other
• Contest being held at the thrift shop as well as the status of these contests
• Resources related to hospice care in New Hampshire and related organizations

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Successes:

• Facebook business page currently has 254 ?likes? ? all from the local community
• 8 Recommendations were made for the page
• 25% of the organizations web traffic comes from their Facebook page
• Everyday an average of 52 people engage with content posted on the wall by ?liking?, sharing, or commenting.
• Content reaches 400-1000 people each week, mostly local within the target market
• A January contest run on Facebook brought in 50 additional donations for that month

Conclusion:

?Facebook has been the fastest way to get information out to my customers and in turn create new contacts through friends of my page? ? Janet, Journey Home Thrift

Journey Home Thrift has achieved great results using Facebook in its first 6 months of operation. Without spending money on any other marketing or promotional efforts, they have been able to exceed their projected income and deliver support to NH hospice organizations ahead of schedule. The community that has been developed using Facebook is filled with loyal members that continue to support the organization by spreading links on social media as well as through word of mouth. This community also has many members that actively volunteer at the thrift shop and go above and beyond by routinely donating items of value to be sold. Journey Home Thrifts community will continue to grow and Facebook will be an integral tool in the organizations future.

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PDF of this Social Media Case Study

Source: http://www.nearcoastmedia.com/facebook/social-media-benefits-small-non-profit-case-study/

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