Convio Innovator Awards: Best Use of New Media

Human Rights Campaign, America's largest civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) equality, was presented with an Innovator Award in the Best Use of New Media category for integrating social media successfully into all its campaigns, and building a robust organizational presence on Facebook and Twitter. HRC values the rapid response that can be generated using social media. When an issue breaks, they can reach out to their supporters via Facebook or Twitter, and encourage them to sign advocacy forms, complete a survey or take another form of action immediately. When a supporter provides their contact information to HRC online, it is added automatically to the organization’s secure database in Convio, which allows HRC to continue conversations with social media users via email.

4-H, is an Innovator finalist for its mobile fundraising campaign, The Give2Vote Challenge, developed to encourage mobile and online giving in support of state 4-H programs. The targeted audience of Facebook fans, aka “4-H Nation”, were encouraged to “vote” for their state 4-H program by texting a $10 donation to a designated short code or by making an online gift to 4-H in their state.

Veterans of Foreign Wars is an Innovator finalist for its simple but effective Declaration of Support for the father of a fallen Marine from the Iraq War. The campaign had virtually no budget or lead-time, but effectively used key social media tools, namely Facebook and Twitter, to deliver more than 40,000 names—some 11,000 of which were new to VFW—in just three weeks. More than half of the new names came from Facebook sources. The names were then entered into a welcome series to begin longer term engagement with VFW.