Non-Profits and Social Media – A Cycle for Change

If you’re in the non-profit sector and still aren’t sure how or if your organization can benefit from social media, consider the following story.

In addition to this blog, I also oversee and write content for Larry Hamill Photography’s blog. Last weekend, he photographed ZombieWalk Columbus 2009, as part of his ongoing documentation of Columbus events. Turns out the walk benefited the Mid-Ohio Foodbank, so naturally I linked to the organization in Larry’s blog post about ZombieWalk.

Once on their website, I followed the link to their Twitter feed. There I learned that if you shop at Kroger, you can use your Plus Card to benefit the Mid-Ohio Foodbank.

Scrolling down their list of tweets, I also discovered FOODFIGHT 6.30, a partnership between the Central Ohio Restaurant Association and Mid-Ohio Foodbank’s Operation Feed. It’s a hunger initiative scheduled to take place on Tuesday, June 30. Participating member restaurants will donate 5% of their sales receipts from that day to Operation Feed, a community-wide food and funds drive.

The event is part virtual food drive, so if you can’t visit a participating restaurant on June 30, you can still help by making an online donation. All donations will help provide food for the hungry in central and eastern Ohio.

Lastly, there was a tweet about ZombieWalk. The numbers weren’t in yet, but word on the street, or at least in the ethers, was that it was a great success. I learned quite a bit – all from a blog posting about zombies. Zombies who had their heads on straight when they created a MySpace page titled ZombieWalk, to promote their fund raising event.

When I log off my blog site in the few minutes, I’ll log into my Twitter account to post a tweet of my own about this blog post, completing the cycle social media tools afford us to help spread our messages for social change.