Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are established by individuals or groups of individuals as a humanitarian service with the major objective of assisting people who are in need in the area of specialization of the NGO. Many NGO owners are driven towards this initiative as a service to their fatherland or the particular area they come from.
Because NGOs are simply there to serve the people, those that are to be served must become aware that those particular organizations exist. There are lots of NGOs in Nigeria today that perform varying duties and people don’t know about them. The reason is that they haven’t done enough awareness to announce their presence. With the following suggestions though, once your NGO is set up, you can get it into the ears of all that needs to know about it in no time.
The first thing you should do before setting up an NGO is to plan well. It is important to know what you are trying to achieve through the NGO and how you want to go about doing that. Also, since the organization is not a profit-making one, you must clearly define how you will get it funded.
Now once the NGO is set up, the next thing is to get people to know about it. Some of the steps that can be taken are:
TALK TO PEOPLE
There must be certain persons close to you with whom you can share your ideas with. These are the first you can ask opinions from. They may be your relatives and friends and generally anybody at all who is ready to listen. Once the discussion has started, you can then keep intimating them of progress made using bulk SMS. They can be the route through which your new NGO’s presence will get to the right ears.
DISCUSS WITH OTHER NGOS
Very likely, there are NGOs before yours and most probably ones that are similar to yours. Discuss with these and get ideas on how they got popular. They can even provide you with a phone number database of people you can contact through SMS to announce your inception.
SPEAK WITH THE LEADERS IN YOUR TARGET GROUP
Before even an NGO is set up, it is important to have clearly in mind what your target group is i.e who are you trying to reach out to. Once this is defined, the next thing is to approach people with authority in that group and get the contacts of those you can reach out to. It might be in schools or a community depending on what your organization stands for. Once you have their contact, then start sending SMS to those announcing your presence.
GET A WEBSITE AND FOLLOW-UP INTEREST
Many NGOs today who are passionate about what they offer have a website. You might want to consider that too if you do not have one at the moment. Through social media platforms, you can drive traffic to your website, and there you can get phone numbers of interested individuals and send bulk SMS to such ones as a follow-up on the interest.
TALK TO GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
Since your NGO is just starting is also not profit-oriented, you need all the help you can get, and a good option will be from government agencies that also specialize in the area you do. They can help blow your trumpets into the ears of all that needs to hear it. What more? They can even get you contacts of those you can contact.
A person who runs NGOs deserves to be applauded. It won’t be nice though if after spending money to set it up, people do not benefit from it. With bulk SMS though, you have an effective communication channel to use in managing your organization. Sign up for an account right away if you’ve not done so and got free SMS units.
