metro >> Jews in the digital age ball of cotton hand-loomed sweaters Learning Curve from page 18 ' , 94 ) Pit111;.‘ 6tvit,i , _ 24.1 Lindsay Leder, JFS director of volunteer services, working with Marsha Burley of the Home Depot in Commerce Township. DESIGNS IN DECORATOR WOOD & LAMINATES, LTD. bathroom remodeling as well as granite, wood and other . Lois Haron Allied Member ASID 248.851.6989 I' •91, 1 1 t , Simplify your life with... professional organizing services * home & office organization de-cluttering * paperwork control w-wwlivesimplybyannie.com 20 March 15 • 2012 (248) 49 6- 8 2 09 1735080 media at all. In most cases, competing in such online contests is a gamble for the non- profits because they don't know what their return on investment will be, and they are allocating a lot of resources, including staff time, to the cause. JFS has recruited Jewish professionals and lay leaders in the community to reach out to their own networks to encourage daily voting on the Home Depot Foundation Facebook page during March. Local members of the Jewish community were asked to include reminders on their social networking sites and in email sig- natures. Some also are participating in "post-a-thons," where volunteers gather at a site and recruit voters via laptop postings. Additionally, JFS offered a daily email reminder service to increase its odds of securing the most votes. "The Home Depot contest, as well as our success last summer at winning Toyota's 100 Cars for Good competition, has made us aware that everything we do needs to have a social media layer" explained Perry Ohren, CEO of JFS. "This has profound meaning in terms of our timing and our message. Timing has to be instantaneous and our message has to be short and engaging:" One organization that has found much success in using its social reach to garner the votes needed to win online contests is Chabad Lubavitch. The international organization headquartered in Brooklyn exploits social networking not only to broadcast its message globally, but also to win financial grants. Chabad schools and service organizations, like the Friendship Circle, have used Facebook and Twitter to rack up hundreds of thou- sands of votes in national contests for six-figure grants by Chase Community Giving and Target Stores. In a Facebook contest sponsored by Kohl's Cares, 12 Jewish day schools in the U.S. finished in the top 20 of the competition, with 11 of those schools . being Chabad-affiliated. Friendship Circle of Michigan, an organization dedicated to helping children with special needs, won $100,000 when it finished third in the Chase Community Giving Challenge on Facebook after using several social media tools to get out the vote. Through these online contests, major corporations are able to donate funds to social service organizations, but its not completely altruistic. After all, the corpo- rations are attracting a lot of attention to their brand. In the case of Home Depot, they are able to get thousands of people to visit their Facebook page each day for a month and look at their corporate logo, even if it is subliminal advertising. That is valuable advertising for the company and the half-million dollar investment is a small fraction of the retail giant's more than $1 billion advertising budget. Foundations for these large compa- nies, like the Home Depot Foundation, have to make large charitable gifts each year so they figure they should at least help promote their corporate brand in the process. Regardless of the motivation behind these online contests, it is certain that they have been the driving force in getting nonprofits to focus more on social media strategies. Hopefully, when there's no large cash prize at the end of the rainbow, nonprofits will continue to utilize social media to promote their cause, raise awareness about their mis- sion and solicit donations. ❑ Rabbi Jason Miller is an entrepreneur, blog- ger and social media expert. He is president of West Bloomfield-based Access Computer Technology and Access Social Media. He received one of 10 `Jewish influencers in Social Media" awards from the National Jewish Outreach Program in New York in February. To vote for Jewish Family Service's Project Build!, go to wwwjfsdet. org/vote. You can vote once daily through March 31. For a daily reminder, go to www.jfsdetroit.org/ hd-challenge. Each day you vote through your daily email reminder, you will be entered to win up to $500 by the end of the month.