Community Management

The working title of the 18th North German Fundraising Days 2023 at Hamburg's Michel addressed the shaping of relationships with interest groups, how to organise this exchange and how to learn from it together.

The organisers of the Fundraising Days, André Lesch, founder and head of the KOSO agency, and Dr Thomas Kreuzer, Managing Director of the Fundraising Academy, described the path from mass communication to individual activation and tailored motivation of communities.

After the intensive workshop day on Monday 24 April 2023 and an exciting evening lecture in the Helmut-Schmidt-Haus on Speersort, which took place thanks to Zeit Media and Duda Zeco, the second day of the 18th North German Fundraising Days 2023 was opened at Hamburg's Michel by Katrin Hartkopf, Managing Director of the Hilfe mit Plan foundation. She painted a picture of the modern, internationally active organisation, which focuses on overarching topics, but also takes care of its donors, e.g. through the Plan evenings, which also take place digitally with films and photos, as well as the Plan trips.

This was followed by future topics with the new organisation AIDDROP, which tackled the topic of crypto donations and the resulting issues, such as whether a crypto donation is a donation in kind or whether it is a monetary donation. New terms such as POD (Proof of Donation), the blockchain itself and the new German term "minten", which must be confirmed or accepted by the organisation, also need to be clarified and explained. Twitter automation is used to directly generate posts that say something like "Hooray, a donation has been made" - which is also intended to help build the community.  

The impulses were followed by a workshop section in which the participants delved deeper into how community management can succeed on business platforms such as LinkedIn and Xing. The participants also discussed where blockchain or Web3 can change or facilitate processes.

Tabea Sternberg, communications strategist and founder of the Berlin-based media consultancy Starmountfilm, contributed important aspects on the use of film contributions, how films have a better impact and what is perceived by target groups. And, of course, event management is also part of communication with donors. We should adapt to these circumstances by adjusting the work processes of the charitable organisation accordingly. In various workshops, including one on agile working held by Dirk Schoch, Head of the Sutor Stiftungskontor, methods were presented that also support the internal communication of organisations in this development. Agile working can have many facets and there are extensive methods and possibilities, from developing a mission statement, analysing from different perspectives with PESTEL, future orientation with the Foresight Process, but also accompanying methods such as Design Thinking, Kanban or Scrum, which are ultimately intended to improve the visibility of joint working. Even if the overview only provided an impetus to think about other working methods, this workshop was also fully focussed on the 18th North German Fundraising Days 2023: "Impulses and new ideas".

The 19th North German Fundraising Days take place in March 2024.
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