Back to: Crowdsource and Share Your Community’s Stories
Welcome to this presentation on crowdsourcing and sharing community stories. We’ll explore how to use Gravity Forms to gather stories from your community—whether they’re members, advocates, or stakeholders—and display them on your website. This approach not only fosters community building but also boosts visibility and engagement
Presenter’s Background and Experience
I’m the Technology Director at a WordPress agency specializing in custom development projects for nonprofits and higher education. My background includes:
- Former Educator: Taught high school and college, gaining insights into nonprofit and educational spaces.
- Web Design Experience: Early work in nonprofit web design provided firsthand experience on both sides—working for nonprofits and serving them as clients.
- Project Highlights: Worked with prominent institutions like UCLA, Syracuse, Harvard, Mayo Clinic, and Cleveland Clinic, blending technology and research.
- Nonprofit Work: Currently involved part-time with a rare disease medical nonprofit, supporting medical research and patient advocacy.
This mix of experiences, from small nonprofits with five staff members to collaborations with large institutions, has given me a deep appreciation for the power of community and storytelling. The strategies I’ll share today are practical and have been applied successfully in real-world scenarios.
Part 1: Crowdsource and Share Your Community’s Stories
Introduction to Community Story Sharing
[00:00:00]
Brian: Hey, welcome to this presentation, crowdsource and share your community stories. Uh, we’re going to talk a little bit about using gravity forms in a way that I’ve done plenty of times with nonprofit clients that I’ve had and have worked for, um, about how we can use, uh, community. And stories that come from the members of our community, our advocates, or, or, you know, whoever our organization is geared towards and we can get their commute, their stories on our websites, but then also how that’s going to affect, uh, more community building, more sharing, and just kind of increased visibility overall.
Presenter’s Background and Experience
Brian: So let’s start first by just talking about myself, my background. I am the technology director at a WordPress agency. We do a lot of WordPress and other kinds of custom development builds, worked with nonprofits and a lot of clients in higher education. Um, personally, my background is that I am a former teacher.
So I used to teach high school and college. So I have sort of like a background growing up in higher education in the nonprofit space. Some of my [00:01:00] first web design jobs were in nonprofits. Um, so I’ve really been on both sides of the equation, having them as clients and actually being in working inside of a nonprofit.
Um, some of the kind of projects I’ve worked on have been. Clients, like I said, like UCLA, Syracuse, Harvard, a lot of, uh, higher education institutions. Um, but I’ve also been able to kind of get to dig in on the research side and do kind of technology research with places like Mayo clinic, Cleveland clinic, uh, researchers at all sorts of different places.
So, um, It’s really been, uh, a good experience to sort of see all the different sides of it and see what it’s like being at a really small nonprofit where you have maybe five staff members to, uh, trying to interact with larger partners and stakeholders and stuff. Um, and then I also do work, um, part time with a rare disease medical non profit that’s in sort of the medical research space.
So we fund research for, uh, uh, solving rare autoimmune disease. So, um, You know, from [00:02:00] being present at, you know, sort of like patient day type events to, uh, medical conferences and stuff, uh, definitely seen a lot of the different sides of nonprofits and, and how important communities are. So this is stuff that I’ve actually used in practice.
Um, this is, Not theoretical for me.