Aspire to Inspire
IMHS Represent!
I recently had the opportunity and privilege to represent IMHS at BlogPaws, a companion pet convention for bloggers, vets, social media and other experts in the pet industry.
The benefits of this conference to IMHS are actually too numerous to list here, but I'd like to point out a key few to help better engage our volunteers and community.
Networking:
ALL of us are ambassadors for IMHS. If you are staff, volunteer, board member or even an infrequent donor to IMHS, why you do what you do for us is important. When you meet others and they ask you what you do, imagine how wonderful it would be to say something like "I work at a bank but my passion is volunteering at Intermountain Humane Society." I spent 5 straight days telling everyone I met at the convention about us and already have had donations come from CR Conversations, Partners in Animal Welfare Services, GingerLead, Doctor Buzby's Toe Grips, and great alliances made from others in the Colorado and other parts across the country. By just networking, people wanted to give and to IMHS for our Cause for Paws and other events.
Taking Every Opportunity:
When at a conference it is easy to be overwhelmed or miss things thinking it doesn't really matter if you don't go to everything. But every time I put out the effort and put myself and IMHS into the hands of another they responded with ideas, product, allegiance, introductions to others who can help, etc., thereby rewarding me for my effort. We all have to get out there. We all have unique gifts and talents and something to give to benefit IMHS. Nothing is too small. No comment to another about IMHS, no donation, share on social media, attendance at an event can ever be not enough or too much. People want to hear why IMHS matters and who is worthy of time and donations so make it easy for them and tell them about IMHS. When you put your effort out into the universe you will be personally rewarded and IMHS will benefit.
Communicate what we do well and what our needs are:
We need to up our game on Social Media and in videos. We are now recruiting for help on both of these aspects to get our story out. We need to tell folks why we are special and how to help. We need to expand our social media presence on Instagram, Twitter and other platforms. Videos are the number one way to get IMHS the viral recognition we and our animals deserve. We need volunteers to help us out with this and hope you'll answer the call by emailing volcoordinator@imhs.org
All in all, we'll be trying to put into practice all that I learned via the BlogPaws Convention and am thrilled to have the opportunity to help IMHS learn and grow. The new board that just began in May 2016 will be working hard to make IMHS the best it can be and grow and change with the ever changing world of the animal care industry and doing outreach the community to make us all the best animal care providers we can be. I'll be doing monthly letters to the community and hope to hear from all of you readers on what you'd like to see in future posts.
