12 Apr 2012 7 Comments

Movember successfully connecting online and offline engagement

 

At this year’s SXSW, Mashable sat down with Movember’s CEO Adam Garone and Digital Strategist Kory Klem to talk about the organization’s success, philosophy, and future goals. Among many things, the two highlighted the importance of connecting online and offline activity in order to strengthen a nonprofit’s supporter engagement.

In many important ways, Movember serves as a platform for action and conversation around men’s health, specifically prostate cancer. “Since launching in 2004, Movember has grown into one of the world’s largest men’s health charities, raising more than $100 million during last year’s campaign,” reports Mashable. This incredible movement has even captured the heart and face of our own FirstGiving CEO.

Movember leverages social media and facial hair growth for engagement

Though not every movement has to be focused around posting pictures of one’s facial hair growth on Facebook, the point we’d like highlight illustrates the importance of synergized online and offline engagement. With ability to track your facial hair growth online, coupled with the day-to-day conversations surrounding the participants growing moustaches, the individual is submerged into the Movember cause and community. Movember participants become billboards for the cause wherever they go.

Build a positive community and culture

By connecting the online and offline worlds, the Movember organization creates a community and culture feedback loop. With their Mo Space (Mo is short for moustache in Australia), participants, affectionately called Mo Bros and Mo Sistas, can interact and exchange with each other online. Boasting facial hair growth, stories, video submissions to the Moscars, and other engagement opportunities, participants help strengthen their, and the Movember organization’s stake in the community; giving them reason to come back and do it all again this November.

 

Movember's "Brushes with Fame" is a competition where participants take pictures with celebrities and discuss men's health. Michael Bublé is pictured above.

 

How can your nonprofit engage its supporters through digital media and personal activism? How can you connect online and offline activity to help strengthen your cause?

 

Start leveraging your online community with a FirstGiving nonprofit account.

 

by Dan Fonseca in Industry News, Nonprofit Resources Tags: , ,