Is your nonprofit holding any fundraisers or special holiday events? Whether you are raising money for the organization or for families using your services, raising awareness of your communities needs or the needs your organization can serve, the chances that a camera is present are quite high.
You can harness the photo snapping power of your volunteers, members, and visitors. Encourage the photo-takers to upload their files to Flickr, a free (or paid) online photo storage and sharing service. When your supporters upload photos from your event, they can “tag,” or label, the photos with your organization’s name. That way, you can put a link on your site to all of the photos with that tag. So, all photos with that tag, regardless of who took them, are grouped together without you doing any work to find them! You can even pull those photos in to your website so you feature new and interesting photos taken by your supporters, with minimal work on the organization’s part.
Be sure to communicate to your supporters that they can use Flickr and tag the photos of your organization, staff, events, etc. (for example, a tag like “socialventurepartners” for pictures of events and supporters of Social Venture Partners International).
You can also create a group (either private or public) in Flickr to easily share and group photos related to your organization. Setting up a group is easy and you will not have to do any work to maintain it once it is ready. Again, you can link to these photos from your website or pull them in to feature your supporters and events right on your own site.
Search for your organization on Flickr and see what comes up! Did you find that photos already exist of your organization? Have you already set up a group or linked to flickr photos of your organization that were taken by volunteers, members, or even strangers?