Great blog, keep on writing,
Jennie Lobato,
http://drawchange.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/drawchange
http://www.drawchange.com/

Once someone gets a new web site, do they have the talent and time to create daily content that draws people to the site?

I’m trying to draw together different resources to think of “all the things” that would help non profits be more effective in their work, not at a single program, but at every volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in the city.

I maintain a database of such programs, which you can search at http://www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net/InteractiveMap.aspx

Using this, web designers could be creating templates, journalism students could be writing stories, web traffic builders and social networkers could be building traffic, and business leaders could be encouraging employees and customers to browse the sites and become volunteers, donors, leaders, etc.

This would reduce much of the pressure on the non profit leader of finding the resources, and give more time, and capacity, to using the resources to provide quality services.

If you and others are interested in this conversation, please connect with us.

I think her recommendations are wise and added some of my own on her blog.

On Oct. 15 12,000 bloggers wrote stories about poverty as part of an international blog action day. Because they did this they generated a buzz which probably increased traffic to some of the sites involved in that day of blogging.

My strategy of survival since 1993 was to apply principles of mass marketing to attract more volunteers and donors to all tutor/mentor programs in the Chicago region, and to educate them to choose where to get involved based on where poverty is greatest, or where they have a business, family member, or customer in the city. While I serve as an intermediary to host and coach this strategy, I’m one of more than 200 programs who benefits when a volunteer or donor searched the Internet and finds my organization.

Thus, I’m coaching other tutor/mentor programs to use blogs and social network places to tell their story, and to connect with similar groups in Chicago and other cities, so that wen one of us is in the spotlight, that gives attention to the rest of us.

As more and more programs adopt this networking strategy, they become the center for attention in the way they talk about the need for tutoring/mentoring in the entire city, and how they apply the practice in their own program.

I think similar thinking could be applied in other parts of the world, and in other social benefit causes.