Friday, February 19, 2010

CFCA: Connecting Online - A Non-profit Social Story

Judy-Anne Goldman(@lacajag) is the public relations lead at the Kansas City-based international non-profit Christian Foundation for Family and Aging (@CFCA). I was lucky enough to speak on a panel at the KCIABC Business Communicator's Summit with Judy-Anne, Alexis Ceule (@alexisceule) with @JohnnysTavernPV and Jason Gertzen (@jginkc) with @Sprint.

In this first post of my four part series covering our panel's topics, I'm going to highlight Judy-Anne's presentation.

A little bit of background on CFCA. Simply put, CFCA helps families in developing countries put food on the table and send their children to school. One of CFCA's main initiatives is linking up sponsoring families with families in need. As a sponsor you provide monthly support for your sponsored child and exchange letters with them. CFCA believes in the potential of the poor to effect change in their own lives and in our world.(Full disclosure: Our family has sponsored Angelica, a Guatemalan 14 year old for 12 years through CFCA. Our family has grown up with Angelica and loves keeping in touch with her through letters. - Yep, snail mail - it's wonderful.)

Judy-Anne took us through CFCA's social story which focuses on listening, serving and sharing:
<div style="width:425px;text-align:left" id="__ss_3089118">CFCA:Connecting online<div style="font-size:11px;font-family:tahoma,arial;height:26px;padding-top:2px;">View more presentations from CFCA.</div></div>

The key to CFCA's social success is integrated web messaging. They utilize all their online properties to help connect sponsors with their sponsored children and provide updates on all their non-profit initiatives. The CFCA team posts breaking news on their various twitter accounts @CFCA, @Walk2gether and @Zamboanga. They provide more than 140 character updates on their Facebook fan page. CFCA follows up with an in-depth blog post and continues conversation through twitter and blog comments. CFCA converses, engages and connects with sponsors and prospects where they are online.

Next up is Alexis Ceule's (@alexisceule) presentation on a small local business @JohnnysTavernPV's social media pilot program.

Posted via web from zenaweist's posterous

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