Community Transit's Blog Series in Support of Van GO Surplus Vehicle Grant Program

Target Audience: This entry primarily targeted to anyone reading our blog or living in our service area, but also focused on reaching nonprofits in our service area.

Strategy Objective:We had several goals: - Share heartwarming stories about the nonprofits who serve our communities everyday and recognize the work they do through storytelling. Tag these orgs in social posts and encourage them to share these stories with their audiences, as well. - Feature our program to encourage people working in the nonprofit sector to apply for a Van GO grant. - Inspire support for local transit by highlighting the ways we give back to the community through programs like this. - We did not have an advertising budget for this specific work, so using our organic social reach and our community connections was key to inviting engagement with this content.

Situation Challenge: Through Community Transit's Van GO program, our vehicles that are earmarked for surplus auction are instead granted to nonprofit organizations. Our retired vans are used to help provide vital services and transportation to the people in our communities who need it most. Since 2000, Community Transit has granted 158 vehicles to nonprofit organizations in Snohomish County. Usually, retired Community Transit vans sold at auction net a few thousand dollars each for the agency. By granting some of these surplus vehicles to these nonprofits, they can continue to provide many times that value in transportation services. We wanted to spread the word about this program to reach nonprofits who may benefit from and to build goodwill for the work we do among people living in our service area.

Results Impact: We successfully met our goals to attract Van GO grant applicants and to highlight the good work that nonprofits do in our region through storytelling. We saw a whopping 61% increase in Van GO grant applications year over year. Our Van GO blog posts were some of the most-viewed and most-shared organic social posts during the weeks that they were shared, and 75% of entries to these pages were new users to our site. Anecdotally, the feedback and comments we saw on these posts were friendly, encouraging, and positive. Many thanked us for the work we do and many expressed thanks for the nonprofits we highlighted, as well.

Why Submit: This entry is a testament to how strong connections to our community are key to the work we do every day. With the collaboration of nonprofits in our communities, we were able to encourage people to apply for this grant program, further build rapport with nonprofits in our communities, and inspire good feelings about the work we do with our community members. These tactics had no advertising budget and were simple to produce. We know that people love reading about the good things happening in their communities and we think this was an effective use of our resources and our community connections.