How are non-profit arts organizations using social media?
An insider look into how 3 organizations engage with their communities.
The rise of social media as a marketing platform is more and more evident. As an artist myself I wondered just how local non-profit arts organizations were implementing these new practices into their interaction with stakeholders and communities. More specifically I wanted to learn more about if and how they were using social media, what platforms, and if it has proven to be effective? To get a diversity of insight I interviewed representatives from three different arts organizations in the Denver area.
My first phone interview was with Jane McDonald, the Director of Marketing & Communications at ReCreative Denver. ReCreative Denver is a non-profit organization “dedicated to promoting creativity, community and environmental stewardship through creative reuse & arts education.”
Q: What is your official title ReCreative Denver? The Director of Marketing & Communications, is that correct?
A: Yes.
Q: Can you tell me a little about ReCreative’s mission?
A: Yeah, so I think I will give you a background about how I got involved. We turned 3 this past year. We recreate and recycle art supplies. We have a large warehouse base — very large — and have many different ways of generating revenue and services like that. We are best known as a creative reuse store, a good will for arts and crafts. We take donations of lightly used crafts and fine art materials then resale them for half the price.
Q: Who does your organization mainly serve?
A: Most of our employees are going through donations, pricing them. We usually get 100 pounds of donations a day. It’s an incredible amount. We have a lot of volunteers to process the donations. We are located in a heavily trafficked area in the Santa Fe Arts District. We have teachers that come, and even regulars who come all the way from the mountains to buy our supplies. In addition to the storefront, we have a gallery that we turn over monthly with artists, we have a woodshop and makers space that is open to the public.
Q: It sounds like you have a large support base. What activities do you generally do with communities?
A: We have programs such as workshops and other events with other organizations. We even have a clothing swap coming up this weekend where we are working with another organization. [ReCreative] is a community space that way. We have friends of other non-profits that we host their events because of our large space.
Q: What brought you to ReCreative?
A: So, we have been open for 3 years. One of the co-founders is a lifelong friend from college at CU Boulder. When I heard what he was starting I was excited. I was first involved as a volunteer then he was like, “Why don’t you do our social?” Which grew to all marketing and communications. I wish it could be a bigger role. I am currently part-time, but we are hoping for a bigger budget in the future.
Q: Have you worked in marketing or social media before? Or was this new for you?
A: I absolutely have a background it. I received my master’s in marketing at the University of Denver. For a good time, I was in the agency field. I was at Blue Moon Digital in Writers Square. I realized though that the agency life wasn’t for me. I went to a smaller agency doing part-time work. I then expanded my career by doing consulting work. I was sometimes doing nonprofit work, project planning or waiting for things to grow. This also allowed me to work on my personal philanthropy.
Q: So, in your role as the Marketing and Communications Director, do you use social media to engage with the community?
A: Social media is a huge tool for us! We are not on a paid platform and we own a lot of our content so that is where we put a lot on social media. We have a presence on Facebook and Instagram, but the content is similar. Facebook is a place where we post our workshops. That attracts people to links to ticket sales on our website. We have Facebook events and workshops and try to post daily content.
Q: How else do you use those platforms?
A: I would say I am posting every 3–4 days on Instagram. We have done some paid advertising through Instagram and Facebook. We have never had a budget but have maybe spent $15. [Paid advertising] definitely grew the events. We have seen some success. However, if the event didn’t resonate with the community then the posts were usually a failure. I am not regularly doing promoted posts at this time; I hope to get a better budget for it.
Q: Right, having the budget would make a difference. What do you usually post?
A: For content, we do “Follow Fridays” on Fridays. These are about the artists that have shown in our galleries and other community artists. We have [artist] friends that we have agreed to give them a bump in their awareness by posting about them and driving people to their Instagram pages, like, “here is an amazing artist, here is some of their art.”
Q: What have you learned about your community by using social media?
A: I usually try to steer clear of calls to action; they don’t do very well. Not even promo codes change that. I found that if it has a whiff of promotion it does not do very well. I also do a weekly “What’s New” such as cool things in the store for purchase. And different things happening in the community. It is really just a mix; I don’t calendar the way I do for other clients. I have an internal sense of what I want, keeping things colorful and on-brand. I have built the social presence to be more natural. It’s all about building that voice.
Q: Have you found anything else to be successful?
A: I would say another thing I do content-wise is reports of other creative reuse stores. I will find them based on hashtags. Then I will find a well-performing post and ask them, “May we repost this crediting you?” Most of our best performing posts come from these reposts. Some are infographics, some are a mantra or a quote. It’s not inauthentic. It is leveraging what has worked with other organizations then using the image and creating your own post.
Q: Why did you decide to use the Facebook and Instagram platforms?
A: We have never really messed with other platforms. We are on LinkedIn but that is mostly looking for board members and to have a presence. They also use Tiktok or Snapchat at the store. But for me, it’s all about the gram [Instagram]. We sell things in the posts and get tagged by other artists.
Q: Right, there are so many platforms out there now. How do people interact with your posts?
A: We have some pretty strong engagements. Some [posts] resonate with people. Something else I found for a recreative store is by creating leverage. People just loved the idea [of recreative stores]; we get tons of engagement. We do get a lot of DM’s [direct messages]. I also do Instagram stories — that’s where I get a lot of engagement. Usually, it’s the fire or heart eye emojis. We also have a workshop doggie named, Henry Biscuit. He does really well [on our social media platforms].
Q: Do you feel like you are able to create an engaging dialogue with your community through social media?
A: Engagement is also hit or miss; [engagement is] always the goal. I try not to exhaust these features [social media]. I will do the polls through Instagram. We always get over 20 people who will respond or buy into the programming we are doing. I do think the frequency at which we get tagged in posts by one of our artists in the gallery helps. Then we get posts every single week.
Q: How has the use of social media impacted ReCreative?
A: I am really happy with the growth, it has been organic. I feel that pressure to participate in social media. Right now, we want to be a part of the conversation.
Q: Have you done research on your followers?
A: Our followers skew younger. That is interesting because the people that shop and come to the workshops are older. We have retirement age people who craft and who engage with our email list. When I get new stuff [art supplies] in, I put it on social media.
Q: What are the demographics like?
A: It is generally younger, and a pretty good split between male and female college students probably 20–40-year-old’s, which is not representative of our usual bread and butter base. It’s good, it is not the same through emails as on social media. I talk to them [the email and social media groups] in pretty different ways. The kind of voice I use is different.
Q: That’s interesting that you have seemingly two groups of demographics, the older generation and the younger generation. How often do you do research and evaluate followers and demographics?
A: I do a report for the Board every month. We are looking at month over month growth like major KPI’s: likes, followers, engagement and paid engagement. Then I usually do a screengrab to show the Board what our demographics are age and gender-wise. They don’t change on a month to month basis. We are just at least taking a look every month to see if there are major changes.
Q: I’m sure that is helpful for board members to see. Do you have any frustrations when it comes to using social media as an engagement tool?
A: I do wish that Instagram didn’t have annoying algorithms. I am always playing the game; it is just the nature of the beast. For a non-profit, it is really hard. We are trying but our posts are being deprioritized. It comes to being authentic and organic when posting. I wish there was a workaround between a business and a 501(c)(3) status nonprofit somewhere in the algorithm. We have to play the same game with other businesses. With social media, it is not transparent.
Q: That makes sense. In closing, what goals do you have for your use of social media in the future?
A: I think we have a lot of opportunities to use paid social ads to promote what we are doing on events, but more on an awareness level. Everything comes from Google; we have a good Google listing. I think we could do that through awareness ads. We don’t do anything with video which we should. Videos are great ways to tell stories. We could be doing a lot more with videos it just depends on the resources and my time.
Talking with Jane showed me just how ReCreative Arts is finding new and innovative ways to engage with their community through social media. I had to know if these experiences with social media were common among other arts organizations. In another phone call I interviewed Alli Burkholder, who runs the social media pages at Art for the Nation’s. Founded in 2004, Art for the Nation’s, though it has been around longer, is newer to using social media with limited followers on their Facebook and Instagram accounts. Alli shared that they only post once a week which usually just highlights pictures about their volunteers and the organizations they work with. Alli shared that they usually depend on word of mouth and email to create dialogues with their community instead of social media. It was an interesting contrast.
As well, I reached out to Juliana Fajardo, the Development and Marketing Manager at Think 360 Arts for Learning through an email interview. Think 360 Arts is a non-profit that serves schools and community venues through trainings, programming and workshops in performing, literary and digital arts. Juliana shared that as an organization they use social media to share stories and programming with the community, advertise teaching artists and offerings and calls for action such as workshops, grant applications, fundraising events and must-sees for teaching artists. They mostly use Facebook and Instagram but also have a Twitter account. When asked if she felt like social media has been effective in sharing and supporting their mission and how, Juliana responded saying,
“Yes — we stay connected with other local arts and cultural organizations, schools, and other entities that may support us or find interest in or use for the work that we do. We want people to know how we are impacting the community as well as know that we are a resource for arts education services.”
It is clear from each of these examples that social media is taking a prominent role in how non-profit arts organizations connect with their communities. Each organization uses their chosen social media platforms to meet their needs and support their mission, just in different ways. In all, it seems social media can be used creatively and effectively to bring awareness to your organization and encourage collaboration with the community.
