OK Humane

As part of our series of "before" profiles in our Social Citizens Makeover, today we would like you to meet Emily Waugh, 30, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Emily loves spending time with animals, so when she saw a local rescue group at her local PetSmart, she jumped on the opportunity to volunteer with them. That was 2000. Nine years later, she is still active in promoting the wellbeing of animals and finding homes for the thousands of healthy, adoptable animals that die in Oklahoma City shelters each year.

Emily has been working with various rescue groups since that day in the PetSmart, but she was excited to be a part of an umbrella organization, like the Central Oklahoma Humane Society (OK Humane), that has the ability to bring small groups together to pool their resources and make a greater impact. In addition to enjoying working with the other passionate volunteers and the staff at OK Humane, Emily says her volunteer work there is extremely satisfying because she can already see how her time and social media skills are directly affecting the treatment of animals in her community.

 Emily and the humane society already use diverse methods to reach their audiences. To supplement the OK Humane website, which shares organizational information and opportunities to get involved, Emily maintains the OK Humane blog, which gets lots of traffic because of the topical and controversial issues discussed. An active Twitter user, Emily says she has been able to use it to exchange ideas, recruit new volunteers, and promote animals for adoption. She recognizes, however, that the majority of OK Humane’s volunteer and donor base is not on Twitter, so she needs other social media tools to effectively reach all her constituents. She also maintains Facebook and MySpace pages for the humane society, but finds that both of the sites have limitations.

She writes a monthly email newsletter which goes out to all adopters, donors, and other constituents. Weekly local television appearances and regular adoption events are also in their communications arsenal. “I'm a huge fan of social media, but I believe you can't forget the ‘traditional’ ways of meeting and connecting with people, either!” says Emily.

With all the different ways she communicates with people, Emily knows her message is being heard by some – around 6,000 website visitors per month and about 400 Twitter followers, to name a few. But Emily is not satisfied. She says, “Considering that I encounter people every single day in this city who have no idea we exist…my work is far from done; I'm not reaching nearly as many as I'd like to.” One of her biggest challenges is managing all these forms of communication herself, on top of her full-time job, so she could use the Social Actions consultant to help her learn to invest her limited time for the most significant results.