North Valley Community Foundation is a publicly supported philanthropic organization based out of Chico, California. Their small, but fiercely passionate team acts as a broker, helping to connect potential donors to their clients, mostly nonprofit organizations. Company President and CEO Alexa Benson-Valavanis has been at the helm since 2005, and in that time has raised more than $50 million in charitable funds. Although NVCF had a strong mission statement and plenty of momentum, internally as well as within the community, both Alexa and M&I saw plenty of room for growth.
“All the elements were there for success. Their challenge was the fact that they moved so quickly with total focus on the projects immediately in front of them that sharing the stories of success wasn’t really a priority.” –Arielle Mullen, M&I
After an initial assessment, NVCF contracted M&I for a six-week project, intended to lay the groundwork for future success, and give them the tools and knowledge they’d need to implement these changes themselves if so desired.
From the first meeting they added value, quickly grasping the rather complex nature of our work Alexa Benson-Valavanis Executive Director, NVCF
M&I set forth with a three-pronged strategy. The goals were to grow their audience on Twitter as quickly as possible, implement content management tools, and develop a clear editorial schedule that could be maintained with ease but built upon if necessary. Seeing immediate growth, the client was pleased with the project’s direction and momentum.
“With limited hours available, we’ve been able to communicate almost exclusively via email, removing some of the natural barriers I have with bringing new people onto the team. Our M&I consultant Arielle needs little to no oversight as she has a firm grasp of the tone, style and content I want to associate our brand with.” –Alexa Benson-Valavanis
At the end of the six-week project, their engagement frequency and post reach on Facebook saw marked improvement, moving from 12 and 196 to 22 and 383 respectively. Twitter metrics also saw a huge boost, with a total growth rate at 99.2%, impressions up 441%, profile visits up 150%, and mentions up 90%. In addition to changes made with their social media strategy, M&I created a custom editorial schedule for their internally-created blog, and wrote a selection of articles for future use. After the project had been completed, M&I met with NVCF employees for a final round of training and debriefing to cover all the new tools.
“I am beyond pleased with the contribution to NVCF and can say that would highly recommend their work to any business trying to improve and increase their audience.” –Alexa Benson-Valavanis
