Merci et à bientôt !

DS

The keyword is found in your sentence: “engage” people. If you want the Facebook crowd to embrace your cause, you need to create something that “engages” them, allowing them to understand what you’re about through a virtual “hands-on” experience.

While I don’t know why you think a Fanpage would not be suitable for your organization, you are partially right: A Fanpage alone is more of a “storefront”. You always need to have something that generates interaction for the simple reason that each user’s Facebook profile tracks these interactions, and shares them with the users’s friends. That’s by design. Just being part of a Fanpage is a one-time interaction — you need something that allows for persistency.

The best tool for that is, of course, a Facebook application. But it needs to be built in such a way that it:

a) …allows users to “show-off” (rule #3), e.g. indirectly send a message to their immediate friends that they have a “socially responsible” side (if that’s your case)

b) …is actually entertaining, cool and can be used as “social glue” to nourish and improve a user’s friend network

c) …clearly demonstrates the benefits of your organization through its inherent interactions

d) …is creative enough to entice the user, while achieving its communication purposes with clarity.

That being said, allow me to speak more generally, because of something you said in your initial sentence: “For those of us in the non-profit association world”.

We have worked with several non-profit organizations in the past, and I’ll tell you what I always told them: you are no different than a profit-based company. You are always selling something.

In your case, you are “selling” a cause or service, and you expect a ROI on your communication action — having people “buy into” your organization.

If you depend on donations, you are selling your “need for support” and expect people to “buy into” that. If you’re proposing a public service, you are selling “solutions for help” and also expect people to “buy into” that. Your communication mechanics should be as enticing and as surprising as those used by a Coke or a Nike. Being of public interest doesn’t necessarily mean being boring.

The key for a non-profit organization is to not put itself in a “request” position, rather being generous with its intended audience by providing it with an original experience to understand an otherwise straightforward concept — hence, in the context of our discussion, an ingenious Facebook application.

Hope this helped! Let me know if I made sense or not.

David