Communicating with your advocates and letting them know how much you appreciate their time and support is part of holding a successful campaign and fostering a strong volunteer community. When preparing for your campaign, make sure your multi-channel marketing strategy specifically targets these volunteers with an “insider” voice to keep them in the loop and encourage them along the way.
While pre-campaign volunteer communication materials and strategies can vary by institution, one truth rings true across our Partner community: the more transparent and direct your are with your volunteers about concrete steps they can take to make a difference, the more likely they are to get involved and engage their peers.
For many institutions this has meant creating a social media toolkit, equipped with accessible “how-to” guides, pre-set language that they can share within emails and social media posts, and shareable social media images. Kalamazoo College built this social media toolkit into an easily accessible page on their school website, while Bates College shared a Google Drive folder with their volunteer community that included these resources.
Other institutions have chosen to engage their volunteers through a series of visual emails, each with a clear call to action that helps keep advocacy bite-sized. Macalester College took this approach by sending two comprehensive emails outlining the what, when, where, why, and how of becoming an advocate. For an example of this advocacy in action, check out the attached email sent out by a class agent encouraging classmates to keep up the good work. Similarly, in keeping with the theme of Wellesley College’s Marathon Monday Challenge, they sent out a “training plan” to their volunteers with a weekly checklist of the one action they should take that week to get in “advocacy shape” before the campaign.
Not ready to build out a social media toolkit or volunteer training guide just yet? Not to worry! GiveCampus has you covered with this customizable How to Become an Advocate one-pager.
On the independent school front, Francis Parker School uses this amazing volunteer handbook to train their parent volunteers for their annual Day of Giving!
When gearing up for a campaign but a giving day especially, it’s essential to train advocates and make sure they have as many resources as possible to help make their jobs fun, easy, and effective, as our Partners listed above have done. Advocates are an important part of a campaign’s success, and Partners that get the most out of the GiveCampus Social Fundraising Platform find creative ways to keep their advocates informed and engaged.
**Have volunteer communications collateral of your own that you’d be willing to share with the GiveCampus Partner community? Let us know at support@givecampus.com, and we’d be happy to feature it!