3 Ways for a Non-Profit to Engage, Network and Support during a Pandemic | COVID-19, India

Written by: Rebecca Shibu

Edited by: Yamini Peter

It's the time for a steady unlock!

When you’ve started re-opening your organization activities/ programs during this unlock period, form a regular and consistent way of communication with your well-wishers and contributors! It is important in this time to grow your network and establish a stronger connection with your patrons.

It is important that you share your stories, your project status halfway through 2020. How do you do it?  let them know what your organization has been up to with a little brainstorming with your team, compile case studies, demographic, photographs from your projects/ program team, you can make the most of it by sharing it with everyone through various social media mediums and newsletter! It is merely not about promotion or selling, also not a definite key for a quick turnaround on responses from many, however, many will remember your story and reach out to you when they are looking for experts in the thematic field. Here are three ways that can help you communicate and increase your visibility:

Use Social Media: Build a credible presence!

If you are not yet on social media, it is time you take this opportunity to create your organization page on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn! This is the time to optimize all digital capacities as much as you can. As we all know these platforms have large user engagement, and these platforms can be used to amplify your organization’s work to your social circle, with a potential snowball effect. If you do not know how to use various social media platforms, you can reach out to your youth volunteers or college students who can help you create your organization's page on Social Media and how to optimize it better.

The social media platforms that we are referring to are Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Youtube. Facebook is the most popular form of social media in India, LinkedIn has many professionals with a more focused approach and can be useful to promote projects here. Youtube and Twitter are again popular amongst everyone in India and internationally.

To begin a conversation, you can either use your existing IEC material or create one. Any interesting highlights from your project, or impact report, can be shared to engage with the audience. A to-do must after you’ve created your NGO page on social media platforms, is to link these pages to your main website and in your email signatures, so that you can redirect well-wisher and engage with them on these pages. We have a few suggestions on what you can potentially talk across social media:

• Share photographs/videos and case studies (blogs) from your existing project and post it on social media platforms;
• Communicate with spirit and vision for creating impact;
• Point out the impact of your project and the primary beneficiaries;
• Create awareness about your thematic area of work through facts and statistics;
• Tell the story of how your organization came into being with case studies past and current projects;
• If you think you can better communicate in your regional language, you should consider that too, since many of the social media platforms allow decent translation.

Collaborate and Support, it's a PANDEMIC!

• There are many non-profit organizations and institutions providing relief during COVID-19, whilst some of them are not. If your organization is one of them, then you can lend support by way of spreading awareness from home about the World Health Organization's safety practices with your field team members, beneficiaries, other individuals in the network and help strengthen the COVID-19 relief efforts. 
• Collaborate with fellow organizations to extend support in the geographic areas where projects are implemented. 
• Alternatively, you can help fellow organizations and institutions looking for monetary or in-kind support by sharing their work stories in your social network and helping them in their outreach. 

Tell your story via emails and newsletters!

• Lastly, keeping in touch with your well-wishers via email/newsletter is a great way to maintain and grow connections. Since the usual way of working has come to a pause for everyone, many of your donors may not be in touch with you for their own reasons. The best option is to then share updates about your project, the measures that you are relying on for resource shortages, invoke the need for support, etc. You can phase out newsletter communication at different intervals.
• Be more creative, send emailers/newsletters about your thematic area of work and begin informed engagement for all people who've been interested in the work that you do.

These are amongst the many things that one can do with respect to their organization's network building. It is a great way to engage with existing well-wishers and a good start to understand the power of social media to reach more people who share similar interests. The activities will ensure that your organization gets visibility and the best of virtual support for projects and initiatives. In a pandemic when things seem uncertain, putting existing resources to use to build on these aspects of the organization is crucial. With the possibility of a lifestyle that will be reliant on the internet and require engagement at personal capacity too, these three ways can be very effective.

You can write to us, what are your activities of engagement with your donors and well-wishers! Share your story with us, tag us on social media platforms, we will share it with our network.