THE DIARY OF AN AGENCY

The Challenge: A small non-profit suffered from a lack of interest at the board and volunteer level. Meeting attendance waned and even the board members who were interested had no "stories" to tell out in the community.

The Solution: We pulled these important stakeholders back to the agency by using technology to re-tell the agency's story and to showcase how agency programs transform human lives.

- To regain the interest of board members, we sent an email every Friday that re-capped the week's program activities and the role they played in the lives of program participants.

When appropriate, we included photos and quotes from children and families enrolled with the agency.

- To expand the audience beyond board members and to volunteers, donors and the St. Louis community, we created an agency news blog.

The news blog included the same information from the weekly board emails, but also allowed the agency to post pictures and link to more detailed program information on the website.

Another benefit of the news blog was that it created two-way communication between the agency and blog readers.