The Milwaukee Jewish Day School successfully completed its work in a nation-wide social media project in April.
MJDS was one of 20 Jewish day schools chosen this past September by Darim Online to participate in a Jewish Day School Social Media Academy.
According to a release from Darim, this academy “is an intensive program designed to help Jewish day schools advance their strategic use of social media in areas such as communication, marketing, community building, alumni relations, and development.”
Janaan Glass, MJDS marketing and communications director, said in a recent telephone interview that participating in this project “allowed us to take our use of social media to the next level.”
Throughout the 2012-13 academic year, participating schools were required to do a variety of things, including send representatives to meetings in New York, participate in webinars, and meet fundraising challenges.
“The idea was to show different ways to explore social media” and learn “how to use them better,” said David Hercenberg, MJDS digital media and marketing specialist, whom Darim listed as MJDS’s “team leader” for this project.
As part of its effort, Glass and Hercenberg said the school committed to raising $10,000 through social media, an amount that would be matched by the academy project’s funder, The AVI CHAI Foundation.
According to Glass, the school set up a page at the fundraising website rally.org, and invited parents of students and school alumni to set up their own pages there through which people could make contributions.
“We need to go where our donors are and need to make [donating] as simple as possible,” said Glass. “Using an online fundraising platform opens us to a new group of donors that might not have given in the past.”
Glass said MJDS posted its rally.org page in mid-March and in four weeks achieved its goal.
Glass and Hercenberg said the school will try this kind of fundraising again, but “not until the next school year,” said Hercenberg.
Leon Cohen
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