If you are a non-profit organization and not following Rebecca Leaman on Wild Apricot’s blog, do yourself a favor and start. It’s an excellent resource and chocked full of relevant information, tips, and insightful conversations that all non-profits can benefit from.
This past weekend I was enjoying her post; Facebook Profiles and Pages and Groups, oh my! This post was very timely for me because I finally created my Facebook profile after coming to terms with the reality that if I’m going to embrace social media on every level, it is simply necessary to have a presence there.
Rebecca’s post is a great explanation of not only the differences between Facebook profiles, pages and groups, but also suggests appropriate uses for each and covers exactly what the folks at Facebook say about them. At the end of her post was when I got really excited. Here’s an excerpt from the last 2 paragraphs of the post.
Embrace the features of Facebook for what they are and what they can do, but ake [sic] your website the hub of your online community. It’s there, on your own turf, where you can encourage a higher level of engagement, subscriptions to your blog or email newsletter, active membership in your organization, conversions to offline actions, and the true two-way communication that leads to more lasting
If you’re familiar at all with MemberHub, you’ll know why this excited me. She’s proving one of our biggest points. And that is this: the members, constituents and volunteer’s of your organization need a platform that centralizes staff and community members to seamlessly handle the logistics, administration, communication and coordination that often drains time, energy and money from all involved parties. Facebook is social networking. It’s a “networking” tool that can be effective at spreading your organization’s reach and better your cause. However, once someone is an active, participating member of any 3rd party organization, they need another tool that will immediately connect them with the organization so they can conduct the “business of being a member”.
Organizations can signup with MemberHub and in minutes have a “hub of [for] your online community” for each volunteer group, ministry, team and/or small group. Hubs are private and secure; you have to be personally invited or have a hub key to join one. With MemberHub, you can immediately encourage your members to participate in conversations, share files and calendars and generally stay connected with instant notifications and automatic event reminders. Leave your website alone for now and create a private online community for your members in MemberHub TODAY!
Thanks for the link to Rebecca’s post. A good read and even an effective illustration of a point she made – Facebook changes are happening so fast it is hard to keep up with and write about them. Since the time of her post Facebook Fan Pages have morphed into a format which is very similar to an individual’s profile page.
Regarding the last point see made:
“Embrace the features of Facebook for what they are and what they can do, but make your website the hub of your online community. It’s there, on your own turf, where you can encourage a higher level of engagement, subscriptions to your blog or email newsletter, active membership in your organization, conversions to offline actions, and the true two-way communication that leads to more lasting commitment to your cause.”
Do you see MemberHub ever having an API that church’s could tap into which would allow them to fully integrate their hubs directly into their websites under their own domains or will we always be forced to go to the MemberHub.com site to use our hubs? It is a different business model, but one that is proving very successful with other web applications such as Twitter, YouVersion, etc.
Excellent question Greg. We are considering different ways in which MemberHub can be incoporated into a church’s existing webiste. Especially in light of the findings that Drew Goodmanson and folks have made on church websites and their effectiveness as a tool for outreach. While the webiste isn’t an effetive outreach tool it is an increasingly releveant tool that members of a church are turning too.
So it would make sense that organizations would want to embed their memberHub calendars, and links to registrations (in the future) and donations on their existing websites. Some sort of widget if you will is what we’ve kicked around. Also, the ability to browse availabe hubs.
Of course, with some minor process changes, this can be encouraged now. For example, we have a church in FL that uses MemberHub and they link to http://memberhub.com/login from their website. THEN, they encourage their members to login into memberhub and click the Remember Me checkbox. The next time the member access MemberHub through the church website, the user is redirected to their MemberHub dashboard, instead of /login/ because they’re already “logged in”. Something to think about.
We are recognizing the need to better integrate with churches existing website.
Thanks Greg. Keep the questions/feedback coming!!!
[...] is intended for. It’s intended to “network”. Facebook is definitely not the best way to connect your members and groups. When you’re in a church and are involved in various ministries and groups you don’t need to [...]
[...] We are a group of dedicated, honest and hard-working individuals that want to serve. We want to serve organizations that exist to serve their members by making software that’s easy to use and helps improve real communication. Facebook is NOT the best way to communicate with your members. [...]