How the National Wildlife Federation uses social media

National Wildlife Federation from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Recently I had the chance to sit down with Danielle Brigida, social media outreach coordinator for the National Wildlife Federation, the enormously important nonprofit organization that inspires Americans to protect wildlife for our children’s future. They do that by combating global warming, protecting wildlife and wildlife habitats and connecting people with nature.

NWF (which is not a government agency, as some think) has been a leader in the use of social media over the past year, and a major reason for that has been Danielle’s work within the organization as well as outside, interacting with supporters and putting a human face on the institution.

“We have a new wave of members and donors coming in — people who want to get their hands dirty,” Danielle says in this 6-minute video interview conducted along a busy street in Berkeley, Calif. “Social media is a great way to start the conversation — and then you have to take it offline. You’re not having a big giant brand tell you what to do anymore. All of our members have a say in what we do.” Many of NWF’s program managers are using Twitter to connect with people and to use it as a sort of instant focus group.

Until our talk, I hadn’t realized the number of Twitter accounts that NWF has, including:

@nwf
@starfocus (Danielle)
@campusecology
@greenhour
@wildlife_watch
@wildlifeaction

Watch or embed the video on Vimeo
Download the original H.264 video from Archive.org

Related

• A Day of the Life of NWF’s Social Media Outreach Coordinator Danielle Brigida (by Michael Solla on Beth’s Blog)

JD Lasica, founder and former editor of Socialbrite, is co-founder of Cruiseable. Contact JD or follow him on Twitter or Google Plus.