February represents heart awareness month. The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Manitoba is in full swing with their door to door fundraising campaign that started on February 1, 2012.
Bryce J. McEwen, communications coordinator for the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Manitoba said the campaign is one of the original fundraising initiatives the foundation started with and said the campaign is evaluated each year.
“The Foundation’s Door-to-Door campaign is the most successful grassroots fundraiser for the foundation, providing an excellent return on investment and raising nearly $700,000 each year in the province. “
McEwen also said the campaign raises more than just funds.
“The campaign raises life-saving awareness in the fight against heart disease and stroke. Thanks to our valued volunteers we are able to reach over 200,000 homes in both urban and rural areas across the province.”
McEwan also said volunteer participation is down slightly from last year but they are very close to their targets.
Barb Gemmell, a nonprofit expert, said several health organizations in Manitoba recruit for door to door volunteers.
“It is more difficult to get people to go door to door these days and the results of a door to door campaign are definitely impacted by the motivation and commitment of the volunteer canvassers.”
Amaro Silva, executive director for the Better Business Bureau of Manitoba can understand why charities use the door to door fundraising strategy but is does have some concern.
“In today’s world said Silva, with the number of schemes and scams on the go on a regular basis, people are probably wary and rightly so.”
Silva also said the Better Business Bureau advises people to be very careful of door to door solicitations. He said to ensure residents look for proper uniforms and to carefully check the canvassers identification. He recommends the legitimate charities ensure their volunteer canvassers are armed with uniforms, name tags charity id etc.
Silva said most scams take the form of a scatter gun approach where criminals will target anyone they think they can scam. For door to door scams though, criminals will target upper income neighbourhoods.
VISUALISATION POSSIBILITIES
When I think of visualizing this story, I think there are many options.
A chart outlining the different dates of when the various different non profits hold their door to door canvassing campaigns would be useful to the reader and also assist the organizations in raising awareness.
A map of upper income areas in the province would be useful so readers can see what areas are most likely to be targeted by criminals.
A graph depicting volunteer involvement with different charities over the years could also be used to demonstrate volunteer trends.
A graph outlining the results of door to door fundraising totals over the years from various different chairities in the city to demonstrate if this type of fundraiser is still successful could also be helpful in portraying this story visually.
Mapping out the number of victims of door to door scams could also be another useful visual component. If of course, these stats are available and current.
For the third part of the assignment, I didn't get very far with it unfortunately but I will try again. I did take a look at the tools that we learned in class though and found this very useful.
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