by Ken Gordon
There I was, on January 15th, at the North American Jewish Day School Conference, conducting an intense, face-to-face social-media consultation with Oakland Hebrew Day School’s Rabbi Yehudah Potok.
R.Y.P., as his Board President fondly calls him, was deeply focused, asking good questions, making all kinds of notes. Yet as we yammered away, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Could a Head of School really be that interested in social media?”
The answer I later learned was this: R.Y.P. is totally serious and smart about Facebook.
Y’see, our man at OHDS had asked me about how to increase the size of his school’s FB fan base. I casually suggested that he:
- Figure out how many Fans his school had at that moment.
- Pick a reachable Fan goal.
- Select a date to reach that goal.
- Appeal strongly to his community – on Facebook but also in an email blast – to do the work and make it happen.
His response? On January 18, just two days after the conference ended, he took this modest idea into the stratosphere. He wrote to his people:
Help be an Ambassador for OHDS! Having entered the world of social media just over a year ago, OHDS already has 160 fans on our OHDS Facebook page. Over the next two weeks (by February 3rd), we would like to challenge our community to recruit as many fans as possible. For every fan we add, $1 will be given to our scholarship fund. Please share the following link with your Facebook friends and ask them to become a fan of OHDS.
In one stroke he transformed the act of asking people to Like a page – a simple and easy-to-accomplish task – into a powerful fundraising activity. Think about it: he created a way for his community to directly contribute to OHDS’ financial sustainability, and engage in a conversation about the community, by merely clicking a button. Brilliant.
I can see many schools using the incremental-but-real incentive of tying together social engagement and fundraising. This social shidduch makes a ton of sense – and OHDS’ particular manifestation seems just the very first step here. I imagine particular conversations being “sponsored” by different JDS programs. For instance:
Create a video about how much you love the Land of Milk and Honey, post it on FB, and we’ll donate $20 to defraying the costs of the eighth grade trip to Israel!
But back to the present: the data from the OHDS experiment was very impressive.
In less than 24 hours, OHDS grew from 160 to 194 Fans.
As I type this, their page has 250 Fans.
Will they add 100 new Fans – 260 Fans – by their deadline?
Don’t know.
But let’s do what we can to help those folks reach 260. Now. Go Like ‘em!
Ken Gordon is the Social Media Manager at PEJE, Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education.
Update: OHDS did meet their goal – and they have a new sponsor and a new goal. From their FB page:
“Wow! We just blew past our 260 ‘Facebook fans’ goal! But, there are still 2 more days… and Oakland Kosher Food has now offered to match another $.50 for every fan that we can get by Friday if we can reach 300 fans. This is on top of the $1 that is already being donated for every new fan that likes the OHDS Facebook page. Keep the fans coming and thank you to all of you for helping us in our fanraising!”
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I’m hesitant to comment, because I don’t want to be a wet blanket. But… I think this is important.
First, let me say I think it’s great that RYP appreciates and understands the power of social media. Pretty soon we won’t even be calling it ‘social’; it will just be ‘media’, because that’s the way we’ll all communicate and all media will be social. So it’s important that more leaders understand that we’ve entered a brand new chapter in the way we do business. Kudos to RYP!
This particular project, however, is not a ‘powerful fundraising activity’. Even when they hit the 300 fan mark, and even with the additional $.50 now being added to the challenge, their grand total raised will be $160. When you consider the time it takes to draft copy, launch the message and respond to those who liked them (hopefully they responded in some way), they’ve probably spent the $160.
It’s critically important we understand our objectives with a project like this one. As Lewis Carroll wrote: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” This is something you don’t do for the $$. You do it to begin a dialogue with your constituents and, hopefully, build stronger relationships over time.
For social media to be a strong relationship building strategy it must be considered as part of a strategic plan. ‘Likes’ are a pretty passive activity, and merely a starting point. Simply having the tools and being connected (e.g. through Facebook) does not result in social engagement. Engagement requires a human touch that makes our constituents feel valued. Someone has to be assigned the job to actively listen and respond.
Relationship building is a discipline that can never stop. It’s hands-on. And we continue to reinforce the bonds by thanking donors for their help and showing them their labors are bearing fruit. We treat them as partners.
I’m a bit struck by the messaging that was sent. It’s really not constituent-centric. It’s all about OHDS. There’s a mention the $$ will go to the scholarship fund, but it’s certainly not an emotional appeal. It doesn’t remind me at all about why I love(d) the school and/or why the scholarship fund is critically important. It doesn’t offer me any opportunity to provide any feedback. What if instead of asking folks to just ‘like’ the school the message also offered the opportunity to post a comment? Perhaps OHDS could have posed a questions, such as “What one word comes to mind to describe your experience at OHDS?” You’d have great research about how you’re perceived, and you’d also show that you care about hearing from your constituents.
We must always ask: What’s in this for our constituents? We need to think beyond the notion of having $1 sent to the school (a pretty low bar, and not likely to make anyone feel particularly more connected). Asking folks to ‘like’ us brings casual visitors (a start). Engagement creates loyalty (an end all and be all). I’m hoping the school has a plan in place to nurture the relationships with their old and new ‘friends.’
Thanks so much for your response, Claire. You bring up some good points. –KG
As I read Ken Gordon’s post I was thinking the purpose of increasing the “fan” base was to create an audience for future posts and appeals and news about the school – the inherent value this first effort was not the moderate payback of the individual $1’s but the future relationship-building potential. I think the Kosher Food group gets that too. No?