The first full day of the Entertainment Industry Foundation’sweek-long TV campaign to inspire a new era of service and volunteerism got off to a rocky start yesterday as engineers wrestled with reported bugs and search issues on the campaign’s website iParticipate.org.
In collaboration with Service Nation the Entertainment Industry Foundation has rallied the star-power of Hollywood behind a campaign to promote citizen service and increase meaningful opportunities for Americans to volunteer their time and skill.
Yesterday the lights came up on the big week of specially-created TV programming, including more than 90 primetime, daytime, news, and talk shows, but unresolved engineering problems related to the implementation of the new All for Good API suite resulted in reports of missing listings, incorrect date information and the publication of expired opportunities.
VolunteerMatch’s support team began tracking many of the issues on Friday as we received feedback from nonprofits looking to find their VolunteerMatch listings on the iParticipate channel. VolunteerMatch organized the issues and requested help from the iParticipate team Friday afternoon to answer questions and resolve the reported bugs.
We understand that solutions are on the way, but Monday’s traffic figures reflect the troubled start. Despite the extraordinary national media attention on Monday iParticipate was unable to convert much of that attention into action.
VolunteerMatch’s internal traffic figures for October 19th reveal that of the 36,644 visits to the VolunteerMatch network yesterday only 943, or 2.57%, came from iParticipate.org.
Traffic from iParticipate.org to VolunteerMatch 10/19/2009
For those committed to measurement and impact this is an unavoidably disappointing outcome. To put it into perspective, we estimate these 944 visits will translate into between 25-30 new volunteers.
Yesterday we got the show without the business and we’re not ready to settle for it. We deserve better.
Tune in tonight and let us know what you think?
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We need to get the TV media to notice little organizations as well. Granted every organization needs support, but the little organizations that are struggling and skipping their personal bills to pay their organizations bills first need help too. We are there with the rest of everyone else showing we care. We love every organization out there working hard but we would like someone to say good job to us as well.
Just having a celebrity say ‘hey, go volunteer’ on TV just isn’t going to cut it anymore. You need engagement – something the top-down TV networks and EIF don’t understand.
The stories and themes concept is interesting. Service should be part of the dialog and working it into stories is a great idea. But to expect TV to drive people to a lame-sounding website to sign up to volunteer – this is patently ridiculous. Like the rest of America, I can barely be bothered to carry my ass to the refrigerator during commercials.
If you want Joe Sixpack out there volunteering, you should probably offer him a sixpack when he shows up.
There’s so many right ways to do this but this isn’t one of them.
The level of bad advice that groups get from consultants is sometimes astounding. Here is a prime example (I am guessing) of just bad advice, which I am sure they paid a lot of money for. Consultants getting paid a lot of money to roll out tired and bland efforts that do nothing for the client. It seems like there are three PR plans out there (that haven changed in years):
1) You need to get an op-ed in the NY Times
2) We’ll go up on television and people will flock to your site especially if you have famous people.
3) Lets create a facebook and twitter page and people will think you are young and trendy and you’ll be the next big thing
Option 3 can be swapped out with whatever is the latest fad or whatever worked in the last big public campaign.
A lot of money is being spent out there for minimal results which is truly unfortunate given the good that could be done with the money being spent on TV (in this case). I see the big issue is consultants not taking the time to learn what the target audience is looking and just going back to the well for old ideas. Now many groups are enablers in this cycle since many love to hire the same consultants and continue to get the same results. Just ask Puffy, P-diddy, Mr Combs how that Vote or Die effort worked out.
Greg and VM Team:
Thanks for providing the field with an honest assessment of national-level efforts to promote volunteering, most recently, through mainstream media outlets. I’ve seen this strategy implemented before — including putting AIDS prevention messages into African soap operas; get-out-the-vote messages in U.S. TV shows; and anti-smoking campaigns incorporated into prime-time media — with mixed results. On the success side, there is evidence showing that some of these campaigns (especially in the reproductive health care area) led to long-term results, but on the other, they became little more than blips on the proverbial screen, i.e., the messaging didn’t translate into behavioral change, which, as any advertising firm will tell you, is the hardest thing to achieve. So, I’m hopeful with this one, but if there’s not ongoing monitoring and, most imporantly, substantive follow-up in terms of making sure that there are resources for the people who hear these messages and want to take action (like, say, by linking to VolunteerMatch or Idealist or other places that help connect people to service opportunities) — and, especially, to making service part of their daily lives (an even greater challenge), this may be for naught. Glad you’re keeping tabs.
Now you can do communtiy service from the comfort of your own home, on your own computer, on your own time!
Greg Baldwin is God!
Greg, what an unfortunate situation – especially given all of the national attention and media exposure that the iParticipate campaign is receiving this week. As you know, I wrote a bit on the Social Citizens Blog (http://www.socialcitizens.org/blog/making-tech-good-great) about the opportunity to move online volunteer platforms like VolunteerMatch from “good to great.” I know that you all are already taking some important steps to do just that – and it’s moments like these that reinforce the need to ensure the supply chain to volunteer service is easy and accessible for everyone.
The new EIF campaign has the potential to truly expose the “unconverted” to new opportunities to give back, but if we don’t make the experience seamless from the beginning, it could very well have the reverse effect. Thanks for what you’re doing to help ensure we don’t lose these important new volunteer recruits.