Should You Blog?
With the popularity of blogs growing everyday and many of us trying to make efforts to reduce our costs it may be wise to ask the question, “Should our organization have a blog?”
Blogging holds much potential and benefit for a non-profit organization or those in the business of raising funds for charities through fitness events. A blog is easy to update and it is current. It allows you to communicate with your donors and participants with your most up-to-date info and over time the community will learn that when they need this current info they simply need to check out your blog.
Creating a blog post once even just once a week can save you time and money. It can serve as a replacement for web-based newsletters and lessen the amount of email you are putting in other’s mailboxes.
While most of us maintain web-sites for our organizations, unless we are very web-savvy, we have web administrators to help out with this. From my experiences this can make it difficult to change the information on your site with short notice. You may be relying on another person and your updates are dependent on their work load.
With a blog you can update immediately, and then leave your major web-changes or announcements to the administrator.
Here are a few ways you could use a blog as a charity fitness event host and fundraiser.
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Announce upcoming races and continue updating as you approach registration deadlines.
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Spread the word about any events associated with the race – additional fundraisers, dinners, etc.
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Put out a call for volunteers to help during the event.
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Announce planning committee meetings.
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Promote training groups which have formed in the community, their meeting time and place.
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Introduce your sponsors and give them recognition.
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Link to participants who are training for the event and who write about it on their own blogs.
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Ask questions and create surveys for your participants to help with the event planning process.
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Get feedback from your community after an event has ended.
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Provide regular updates and information when fundraising goals are met or provide more encouragement for meeting them.
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Post links for race day results.
The most popular blogging platforms are Blogger and Wordpress, but a great option for blogging is also available on the Charity Mile web-site. I plan to discuss this option more in my next post.
During your next planning meeting discuss with your group how your efforts might benefit from a blog.
If you are currently part of an organization that uses a blog in this manner I would love to hear how it has worked for you.
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