It might seem counterintuitive that an 80 year old camping organization could benefit from social media. The YMCA Adventure Guides program is fertile ground for aggressive adoption of multiple forms of social media for member communication, fund-raising and recruiting.
Adventure Guides, formerly Indian Guides, began in 1926 to counter the loss of the father’s influence in the household to increasing urbanization and industrialization. It was focused on providing time for fathers and sons to spend together outdoors in the company of other men. The program remains as relevant in today’s information society as it was in yesteryear’s industrial one.
Even if you are not involved with Adventure Guides, examining how social media is useful to this program may inspire you to look for ways it can be applied in your company or organization. The goals for our use of social media are to improve member participation, increase fund raising and grow the program through higher recruiting.
To improve participation we need to accomplish two separate tasks. First we must ensure that members know the details of all activities and second we need to generate enthusiasm in the group about the events. Facebook provides great tools to accomplish both of these activities. The nation’s private Facebook group can be the main focus. Events can be created for your activities with complete details. Leadership can use this space to promote the activity through comments and sharing. In addition, because of the privacy controls, pictures and videos of past events can be shared with participants. Other forms of social media, particularly Twitter, can be used to promote the Facebook group.
Social media plays a similar role for promoting fund raising. If the nation takes the time to prepare web pages or public Facebook fan pages for fund raising programs and events then it becomes easy for the membership to share those events out to their personal social networks. Care must be taken to ensure that the material is easily shared and appears professional so as to encourage members to share it. When relying on the members’ social networks it is important for the nation leadership to provide value. The nation can assist members in building their networks and in return can expand the reach of its own marketing.
The same techniques that are valuable for fund raising also apply to recruiting. The Adventure Guides has always depended on word of mouth to bring in new recruits. Some active recruiting is done via schools and directly through the YMCA. If social networks are the new word of mouth then members should be encouraged to reach out to their social networks for new recruits. However, social media also provides an opportunity to reach out to people by interest and not via preexisting networks. Specifically members should be encouraged to use location based services such as Foursquare of Gowalla during nation activity. People checking in at the same venues can become aware of the program through comments added by the leadership. In the past, direct exposure to the program in this manner was limited to the actual duration of the event. Through the use of social media people can become aware of the program just by visiting a site that the nation visited months earlier.
Adventure Guides is an inclusive program and leadership needs to be aware that not all members are technically proficient. The program should never become dependent solely on social media for communication. Email, phone calls and in person meetings are still essential. However, social media is becoming pervasive and forward thinking leadership should aggressively pursue the use of these technologies to enhance and enrich their programs.
What creative ways have you used social media or other technology in support of your tribe or nation? Are you in favor of social media use as part of Adventure Guides?
Stephen Cerruti is Nation Chief of the Redhawk of the Magdalena Ecke Family YMCA in Encinitas, CA.