Volunteers, supporters and like-minded folks are an asset for all nonprofit organisations. Using Flickr as a platform to bring everyone and everything together, with all parties mutually benefiting from the endeavour, will yield a considerable return. Exerting effort in bridging the gap, utilising a highly creative way of building the bridge no less, will be advantageous for any nonprofit. As you share photos, videos, ideas, and stories, you are also encouraging your public to do the same, hence, allowing your organisation to not only build its own rich and relevant content, but also to take advantage of the creativity of as many indiciduals as possible and, ultimately, engage them in your cause.
Now, here are 5 ways on how nonprofits can use this photo sharing software:
1) Flickr can add a new dimension on how you deliver your message.
Words are powerful. But, the beauty of a still image can move you beyond words and this goes the same for videos. So, imagine the great things that can happen after creating and delivering a message using all these three: photos, videos and text --- all uploaded and shared in your Flickr account. It provides a good platform to creatively tell the story, the core message of the cause, and even report on how your audience responds to the message.
2) Flickr can help bring offline activities and projects to the web.
As you tell your story, you’re no longer limited to simply sharing and participating in activities you do online. With the use of the photos and videos, you can bring the offline events into life as you upload the photos and/or videos from a recent fundraiser you hosted for example, onto Flickr. Folks who were there will have the opportunity to re-live the moments that they enjoyed and quite possibly even share them with others who had wanted to go but were unable to. It can then be a good opportunity to bring in post-fundraiser activities into the picture. This time, they’re all happening online without the cost of catering and venue.
3) Flickr can be an effective venue to run contests and promote events.
Other activities that are quite commonly done the traditional way, like running contests and printing out fliers and posters to promote events can now be shifted to one channel online. Utilising your organisation’s Flickr account, you can start a group and run a photo contest. Groups can be private or public and can be organised around a specific campaign, event, topic or theme, pretty much anything you want the group to be about really. Start off by engaging your contacts and inviting supporters to upload photos with a link back to your Flickr group. Encourage everyone to participate by giving feedback and leaving comments on the photo entries. You can set the mechanics on how an entry can win.
4) Flickr can be a fantastic platform to launch a campaign.
Incorporating Flickr as the primary platform to jumpstart a systematic course of aggressive activities such as contests and interactive promotional initiatives will prove to be a great strategy in fulfilling a specific purpose, e.g., information distribution, cause awareness, volunteer generation, community building or fund raising. Take for example increasing awareness on breast cancer, you can encourage your supporters to rally the cause by including the pink ribbon insignia on the image they will upload on your organisation’s Flickr group especially created for this cause. You can then tie it in with a photo contest and cap it off with a get together, it can be a small mixer to simply bring people together and talk about the cause. Later, people may even post the event photos online and let the conversation flourish there. This will run a full schedule, which involves both online and offline activities that are centered around the purpose of increasing awareness for a specific cause, empowered by the Flickr group that your organisation used.
5) Flickr can be a great way to build your community.
The features available on Flickr makes interacting with the public conducive. Moving beyond the major ones like uploading photos and videos and leaving comments on photos, you’ll find it rich with other options for engagement. With a little knowledge in basic HTML code, you can create hyperlinks on text fields, e.g., description and comment boxes, thus allowing you to share relevant and useful links which your volunteers and supporters will appreciate; or you can simply leave the full URL on the fields, if your tech know-how falls short. There’s also the reliable in-profile messaging that can serve as your email substitute. You can use this to send out brief updates on what’s currently on your organisation’s plate or a tool you can utilise as you run contests, promote events or launch campaigns. Lastly, the creating Groups on Flickr is one of the best ways to engage and nurture your community. It allows a creative way of fostering camaraderie and, in a way, it aids in celebrating the commonalities that both the nonprofits and their community share.
Did You Know?
You can start a Flickr account for free. However, if you want increased options, uploads, storage space, and more features, you need a Flickr Pro Account. Normally priced at US$24.95/year per license, nonprofit organisations who are eligible for our Donation & Discount program are able to get Flickr Pro licenses for a low admin fee (AU$7 for 2 annual licenses or AU$13 for 5 annual licenses). So, apply for your Flickr licenses at Connecting Up's Donation & Discount program today and start using this photo sharing tool for your nonprofit organisation's operations.
