This may seem a little crazy at first, but I wonder, should churches and nonprofits buy Facebook ads? Our business has been running some ads on Facebook and finding some great success. It’s easy, hyper-targeted and based on demographic information in your Facebook profile. So I started to wonder if I should share my experience with creating Facebook Ads..and we will, in another post. But for now, I’m wondering what would it look like for a church to be “advertising” on Facebook? Why would a church ever do that?

I’m sure this topic has been debated somewhere on the Internet before (although a quick search didn’t reveal anything fascinating) but I think it’s brilliant. Why not pay for clicks on Ads in Facebook? Why not target people in specific zip code and draw attention to your organization…to your ministries, events, message…your website. Think about it, I bet for roughly $1/click you could have your specific message being place on Facebook and reaching folks right where they are: Facebook. You could have literally millions of impressions and pay for only 5 clicks a day. Would it be worth it?

• Would it increase the likelihood of that one guy that drives by your church everyday to actually show up one Sunday?
• Would it increase the participation in a local outreach event? Think service project or Good Friday festival!
• Would it bring recognition to your organization on a local level that may ultimately lead to serving the community on a greater level?

I think so. I think it’s worth a try. Have you ever considered this? What churches and nonprofits are doing this and finding success? Leave some links to interesting posts or thoughts below!

(Note: The image above was produced by Church Ad Project. Check them out: http://www.churchad.com)

Beginning at the time of this post until Friday, September 11, 2009 at 12:00 noon you will have the opportunity to receive a free one year subscription to MemberHub for your nonprofit. Simply tweet or retweet the following phrase:

Follow @memberhub and RT this to win a free 1 year subscription for your #nonprofit

Every year, the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits holds an annual conference where folks can share ideas and solutions that strengthen the nonprofit sector. Here’s a quote from their website:

“Now more than ever, nonprofits need to gather to exchange ideas, look at opportunities to collaborate and network with peers.”

Not only do nonprofits need to do this at the conference, the members and the constituents inside your nonprofit need to do this on a daily basis. Perhaps the most important thing you can do to help ensure the resilience of your cause is to ensure that your members, groups and committees are well organized and collaborating. MemberHub can help with this. This is why we want to provide the nonprofit sector an opportunity to use our software for an entire year…free of charge.

In conjunction with the start of the annual conference we’ll be running this Twitter contest to raise awareness of our product in the nonprofit sector. We want to form solid relationships that will help our team build an even more valuable tool for nonprofits.

Rules:

• You must be a 501(c)(3) organization to qualify
• The winner will be announced on Monday, September 14th
• The winner will be sent a DM so be sure to follow @memberhub
• New customers are only eligible
• We will randomly select a winner using http://tweetaways.com
• Winner can choose a Platinum, Gold or Silver package based on their current needs

I was recently speaking with a colleague (who happens to be an avid MemberHub user) that works with many nonprofits and he revealed to me one of the hidden values in collaboration software.

Kevin was telling me that one of the common challenges in nonprofits is bringing on a new board member, or any member for that matter, and bringing that person “up to speed”. There is often a great deal of information to cover including documents to be read, conversations to take place and general history.

Recently, one of the nonprofits that he works with brought on a new board member and instead of spending a day talking or explaining discussions and opinions of various members, Kevin realized that he could just point the new board member to their MemberHub account. Because the nonprofit groups had funneled communications and collaboration through their hubs, the new board member spent a day reading discussions that had taken place through the hub, downloading and reading documents, browsing the calendar and checking out the profiles of various members. Instead of taking a day of someone else’s time the new board member was able to join the hub and the history was all there!

After Kevin finished telling me this, he turned to me and said, “Now that’s real value.”. That’s what I’m talking about.

So what is your nonprofit using for collaborative technology? Do you see the value and need for it?