Kin Blog

Inexpensive ways to thank volunteers. 

The House with a Heart

Early in May 2016, a wildfire of unknown origin broke out in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo in northwest Alberta, close to the city of Fort McMurray. In less than two days, the fire encroached upon Fort McMurray itself, resulting in the evacuation of the entire population of the city and the work camps and oil sands plants north of the city – a total of more than 94,000 people – to communities elsewhere in northern, central and southern Alberta. At its peak, the wildfire had consumed almost 590,000 hectares of tinder-dry boreal forest in Alberta and Saskatchewan, making it the largest and most expensive natural disaster in recorded Canadian history.

Social media can a noisy place, so it's important that you employ the following tactics to ensure your message makes it through.

Address Your Impact

In a previous post we spoke about the value of storytelling in non-profit and how it can help you effectively reach your audience in the digital age. A key part of telling your story is addressing the direct impact of your organization and your specific event. If it’s a recurring event, share pictures from past events, but also let your audience know last year’s outcome and the tangible benefits (and how those benefits might increase with a boon in participation).

As a not-for-profit service organization, Kin Canada is exposed to many stories of human compassion and service. We are lucky to be constant witness to stories of friendship and generosity that come from within our organization and from those we have the pleasure of partnering with or simply existing alongside.

And when the holiday season is approaching, food security is one of the issues that’s squarely on our minds.

We recently had the pleasure of welcoming the Executive Director of the Barrie Food Bank into our midst to talk about the overwhelming shift seen within the organization in the last few years. He shared with us inspiring stories of a food bank client turned millionaire donor and a complete turnaround in community engagement that has resulted in a 50 per cent boon to the organization’s donations.

So what can we learn from this growth? Here are five shared values that have driven much of what we do here at Kin Canada as well as helped the Barrie Food Bank become one of the most lauded and engaged with charities in its community.

Donating blood can be a straightforward, effective way to make an immediate and measurable impact within your community. But it’s not always the easiest thing to commit to.

We get it.

It can be an intimidating process for a lot of people, largely because you don’t know what to expect and, you know, you’re giving blood. That’s not always an easy thing to visualize.

Two members of Kin Canada HQ recently went to donate blood in support of our partnership with Canadian Blood Services, and wanted to share what they learned in the hopes that we could help alleviate some nerves of people interested in giving back.

Kinsmen, Kinette and Kin Clubs serve the community’s greatest need. Donating blood is a nation-wide need that touches most every Canadian so Kin is formally reviving our relationship with Canadian Blood Services.

Age and Generation makes a difference when communicating. Especially when it comes to communication methods, work attitudes and feedback expectations. Check out this post for some things to remember when communicating cross-generationally.

Canadians seek different volunteer experiences throughout their lifespans as their circumstances and priorities change. Traditionally, volunteering has been a feel-good way to give back to the community; but now, it has also become a means for young people to gain skills for the labour market. A lot of Canadian high school students need 30-40 volunteer hours as a requirement to graduate. Having students help with your Kin events is a win for both you and them.

With the emergence (and dominance) of social media and other online tools in our daily lives, getting through to your audience can be tricky at times. How do you get through to someone who is constantly seeing ads, jumping around different social media sites and scanning headlines but rarely reading full stories throughout the day? One way is through storytelling, and telling your story properly.