We're here to help you help your agencies. Here are a few suggestions for getting your partners on board with your new software:
Getting Started with Your Agencies
We know that each United Way is unique, but many of our clients find their relationships with their agencies to be immeasurably important to achieve your goals within your community. Let's talk about getting started with your agencies.
Because your United Way might support multiple efforts in your community, your agencies may need help understanding where they fit in and how they benefit from joining you. We recommend building on the strong reputation of United Way and emphasizing the exposure your platform can offer other non-profit agencies.
This PDF called How Your Agency Can Benefit from Get Connected will point out many of the benefits of using your Get Connected platform. Seven different benefits are listed on that one page PDF. When you share this with your agencies (or potential agencies), you can personalize the message by emphasizing one or two points that best match your goals and your community.
You can also help get your agencies involved by telling them the “story” of their involvement with you. Something like this Road Map for Success can help them envision the whole process.
Training Your Agencies
One key to getting your agencies involved is making sure they are comfortable using the site. They are much more likely to engage with you if they know what they are doing!
You can direct your agencies to a free live training for them by sharing the article on Connect Site Training for Agency Managers. We recommend agency managers take live training for several reasons:
they can submit their questions through the live chat
they can build a sense of community with other agencies
they get clear instructions on how to contact you, the site manager
If they are not able to attend the live training, you can send them the recorded version: Full Get Connected Agency Training.
Agency managers also have their own section of the Help Center.
Helping Your Agencies
So you’ve engaged your agencies and you’ve provided them training opportunities and materials. Now you’ll need to be prepared to support them. When and how do they contact you?
First, you’ll want to set the right expectations.
You, as the site manager for your local United Way, are the main contact for your local agencies. The Customer Care team at Galaxy Digital is always there for you! But you are the contact for your agency managers.
You get to set the right expectations and boundaries for yourself and your agencies. You can let them know when to reach out to you directly, or when they should look to the Help Center.
There are a few ways that your agencies can reach you.
They can email you directly. That is our recommended practice since you will likely have a number of varying agencies working with your United Way. Emails allow you to think clearly about how that particular agency engages with you before you respond.
Sharing your phone number can be tricky. You might want your agencies to be able to call you, but you want to share your number in a way that is accessible to them, but not to volunteers, or you’ll be flooded. For example, you can include your email in the automated message that goes to agencies when they are approved to join your site. (We’ll cover these notifications in the next lesson.)
Agency managers who are using the platform can also scroll to the bottom of any screen on your site and click "Contact Us.” Bear in mind that "Us" means "you" in this case - clicking that label will direct them to you!
