We set out with the intention of growing our follower and donor base by reconnecting people to the heart of our mission. For the last few years, the Foundation has been primarily stagnant, operating in the background and doing great work but not intentionally trying to grow or scale. With new leadership at the helm, we decided to refocus and reinvigorate our brand by helping show others the great work we are doing. Many of our followers had not seen our beneficiaries since we first brought them in as children. As such, we decided to update them through a Where Are They Now? campaign while highlighting what "giving the gift of independence" truly means to our JTF kids.
The strategy for our campaign was simply an extension of what we were already doing. Every quarter, the Executive Director and Jordan talk to each of our beneficiaries and ask for updates and needs moving forward. This year, we decided to ask for photo updates as well as testimonials to share. The outpouring of photos and stories was phenomenal. We used the majority of our stories to create a content calendar for a 24-hour event called the Big Payback. Through periodic updates, we were able to see record levels of engagement on our page as well as increase the number of followers and unique donors. Since then, we have continued these updates through a weekly/monthly series depending on the frequency of new updates.
For The Big Payback, our weekly Facebook page update reflected the following:
10K Post Reach (an increase of 8.7K%)
2.6K Post Engagement (an increase of 6.6K%)
46 New Page Likes (an increase of 1.0K%)
Every week we have continued to have a post reach of between 2K and 5K and a post engagement of 500 to 900. This is leaps and bounds over our previous social media engagement numbers. We also consistently bring in about 8-10 new likes a week. The improvements in our social media alone outside of the influx of new donors has been astounding.
We also leveraged this new social media presence to become a Top Rated Charity by Great Nonprofits
Our JTF kids are now paralympians, US track and field junior champions, running for the first time, wearing high heels for the first time, playing football, playing competitive wheelchair basketball, learning to drive, learning adaptive climbing, and studying to be prosthetists. You name it, our kids are doing it, all because our donors gave them the gift of independence.
