How I Developed an Alumni Association in One Month: Week 2 Update
I decided to take on a project to challenge and push myself, develop my professional skills, and create value for an organization I care deeply about: the Alumni Association of the Epsilon-Nu Chapter of Lambda Chi Alpha. You can read an overview of what I did here.
If you’re reading this, it’s probably because you know a little bit about this project I’m working on: I’m developing my fraternity’s alumni association in one month by creating a landing page for individuals to learn more about the association, creating a plan to recruit new members to volunteer with the association, and creating a plan to raise funds for the association. The purpose of this post and my other weekly update posts is to tell you a bit about what I did each week to complete my project.
Writing Copy
I began this week by hitting the ground running on my landing page. To start, I had to write lots of copy. This included things as small as a simple sub-header for an “about us” section to writing out an entire FAQ page. I started by just writing out all the copy I wanted on a Google Document. Once I had copy I was satisfied with, I started building a landing page.
Building a Landing Page
Building a landing page was probably the toughest part of this project, as I’m not someone who is naturally tech-savvy like some people. I had to rely on my desire and ability to learn and learn fast.
I was fortunate in that Wix is quite user-friendly. Its overall functionality and plethora of templates and features to choose from made it very easy for someone like me to pick it up fairly quickly. Making cosmetic changes and putting together the bare bones of the landing page is a start, and it’s something that will improve with gathering feedback from peers and making continual changes.
The real meat of this landing page is going to be about integrating apps and automations that set the association up for future success.
Researching Leads
The other major part of this week was all about building two leads lists: one for people we’d like to target to donate money to the board and the other for recruiting new members to serve on the board. For both of these, it was important to have a sales mindset, even if I’m not “selling” in the conventional way one does sales for a private company. I’m seeking to fundraise and recruit for is essentially a nonprofit organization.
That being said, the thinking behind how to be successful with and performing these tasks are quite similar! For example, I used tools such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Hunter.io to seek out leads and find up-to-date emails on individuals. Something that made this project somewhat unique and special, though, was the use of social media to come to my advantage. You can see how I did it here.
Wrap-Up
This week I got a lot done, but it also made me realize that I still have a lot to do! I haven’t started setting up the automations I need, I need to write copy to send to my leads, and I need to make sure my leads lists are completely up to date and accurate. I’m definitely getting challenged, but I’m optimistic I’ll have a good project come the end of this month. Looks like I have more work ahead of me!
