Give With Us Review: NetBanker 2.0
Over at NetBanker 2.0 Jim calls Give With Us a cost-effective way to start a blog AND make a difference.
The review includes recommendations to make the service even better, and we’re most certainly listening. We absolutely agree with his analysis:
The biggest problem will be attention, or rather lack of it. How do you get overworked volunteers and non-profit staffers to take time to post volunteer opportunities? Even harder, how do you get the community to remember to look at your blog when they are in a volunteering mood?
SELCO has a link on its home page, but how do you reach out to the larger community to make this relevant? The SELCO website has 77 volunteer postings, but only 3 comments in the past 6 months. That suggests it’s relatively lightly used by those donating their time.
But any new offering takes time to get rolling. It’s not unrealistic that you could end up being THE place in your market where volunteer opportunities are publicized. But that will take more effort than just posting it on your homepage.
Jim’s right – Give With Us requires a commitment of time and energy to make it work; it’s the same with launching any social media campaign. Without attention, a blog can get stale very quickly.
We’re hoping Give With Us makes life easier for volunteer coordinators. We know of many credit unions, churches and other groups already rounding up volunteers; they’re just relying on email, static websites, or bulletin boards to get the info out there.
In an email I sent a few days ago to a credit union interested in offering the service, I addressed the participation requirements:
You’ll find that launching this product may require a shift in the relationship that you have with other nonprofits in the community (I don’t know how involved your CU is with local groups already). It requires that your credit union is getting out and making (or that you’re willing to make) a difference with groups like Shriners Hospitals, Habitat for Humanity, the American Red Cross, etc. If you’re game, we think it’s a big opportunity to affect change in your community.
Many thanks to Jim for the review! If you’d like to see a higher resolution version of the preview yourself, here it is.
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