The Gamiing Nature Centre is a large nature preserve in Ontario that was established 11 years ago. It uses social media like Facebook, Twitter, and blogs to promote environmental education and land stewardship. However, an evaluation found that it lacked a clear social media strategy and content plan. It was recommended that Gamiing define its goals and how audiences should interact before further developing its social media presence. Volunteers then helped rebuild Gamiing's online presence and it received an award for the feedback.

1. GamiingNature Centre
5822 Social Media Final
Dana Clark
Jim Berry

2. Gamiing Nature Centre an Idea
Sparked by a Challenge
We used Sparked.com to find a social media challenge

3. Gamiing Nature Centre
What is it?
The Gamiing Nature Centre is a large body of land
about 2 hours NE of Toronto. It was once used as
farmland, but considered too rocky. A family
purchased the land about 20 years ago. Over the
years they restored it to it’s natural habitat by
planting trees and allowing nature to do the rest.
Eleven years ago it evolved into the Gamiing Nature
Centre.

4. Mission statement
The Gamiing Nature Centre promotes the
understanding and use of practices that balance
human needs with the needs of wildlife. They do
this by
 Practicing a philosophy of land and water
stewardship
 Preserving a diversity of indigenous plant and animal
species
 Serving as an educational and practical resource for
the community

5. GamiingCentre
Use of Social Media Before
 Blog
 Twitter
 Facebook
 Google +
 Pinterest

6. Our Initial Recommended
Strategy
 Target your target audience then decide the kind of
relationship you wish to build (knowledge, friendship, K-12
education, college environmental lab, etc)
 Get content from college student volunteers
 Use tools to know who’s viewing your activity
 Use tools like Klout to know your presence
 Make a connection with your audience with content
 Highlight Activities prior to the event
 Branding consistent themes
 Attract kids, teachers, college faculty

7. Recommended tools
Tool Purpose Used by Gamiing
Blog Education, depth, Yes!
advertising
Twitter Guide to other tools, Yes!
headlines
Facebook Casual, social, causes Yes!
LinkedIn Professional Yes!
connections, fund
raising, discussions
Pinterest Brand awareness, Yes!
personality and
connection
Google + Social, Community Yes!
Klout Understand online No!
presences

8. Then we learned…
 Gamiig really needed help with content and SM
organization. They are not alone
 According to the Nonprofit Social Network
Benchmark Report 2011
 89% of nonprofits report having a presence on
Facebook in 2011 and only 30% use LinkedIn
 57% of nonprofits report measured soft benefits of
using social media including awareness, education,
non-financial supporter participation

9. Then we learned…
 86% of Canadian social networkers are on Facebook
 10-15% of funds raised come in online
 Successful fundraising on the internet has increase
from 38% in 2009 to 46% in 2011. This includes
funds from $1 to $10k annually

10. What worked/what didn’t
Worked Well Did Not Work
As a team viewing web sites and As a team formulating our
Twitter posts to understand the recommendation based on online
Gamiing research and interaction only
Gamiing has active accounts with Gamiing’s content and ability to
“the right” social media tools clearly convey a content driven
posts
Gamiing’s ability to get volunteers Allowing Social Media volunteers
through grants and online to remain autonomous
solicitation
Gamiing’s social media techniques Maintaining an unclear strategy for
were present (frequent posts and the Nature Centre
responsive to feedback)

11. Lessons learned
The Gamiing Nature Centre needs to clearly define
their strategy before they can have a
successful, coordinated social media approach.
Social media cannot be effective if you do not know
the message you are trying to communicate, you
will simply spread confusion faster. In many ways
this is what The Gamiing Nature Centre is doing.
They are using good social media techniques, but
their message is confusing and they are not driving
people to action.

12. Our Final Recommended
Strategy
 Define a clear strategy for the Gamiing Centre
 Decide how the world should interact with Gamiig
 Contributory
 Collaborative
 Co-Creative
 Hosted
Source: http://www.participatorymuseum.org/

13. Gamiing Nature Centre use
of social media after
To be determined as Gamiing works with volunteers
from Illinois to India to rebuild their webpage.
Volunteers include webmaster, college
students, social media strategist and even high
school students.

14. Gamiing Nature Centre use
of social media after
We were elated to learn Gamiing Nature Centre had
given us an Award of Excellence for our feedback
and evaluation of their blog.

15. References
 http://www.sparked.com/ask/Our-blog---where-
do-we-go-from-here
 http://nonprofitsocialnetworksurvey.com/downlo
adreport.php
 http://www.artez.com/blogs/digitalfundraisingfr
omatoz/social-media-makes-doing-good-easier
 http://www.participatorymuseum.org/
 http://beth.typepad.com/