1st Financial Federal Credit Union of Wentzville, Mo., is running a Facebook campaign through August to raise community awareness and funds for a not-for-profit agency that seeks to prevent child abuse and neglect.
The credit union has pledged to donate $1 to St. Louis Crisis Nursery for every new “like” 1st Financial Federal CU receives on its Facebook page from Aug. 1 to Aug. 31.
As of Aug. 13, the credit union has garnered about 110 new Facebook likes and is hoping to gather a lot more.
“The goal of (the Facebook campaign) is to create awareness for the St. Louis Crisis Nursery. Any additional awareness we can motivate for that organization is a success,” said Laura Woods, the credit union’s marketing communications manager. “Of course, we would like to see more because we believe in the St. Louis Crisis Nursery.”
The St. Louis Crisis Nursery provides short-term shelter for children whose families face an emergency or crisis, including overwhelming parental stress, parental or sibling illness or death, lack of utilities, food or shelter, domestic violence or any other emergency that jeopardizes the safety and well-being of children and requires temporary parent-child separation
“As a cooperative financial institution, we try to partner with good non-profits such as the St. Louis Crisis Nursery in our area as much as we can,” explained Woods. “As much as we want to educate our members about our products and services, we try to take time out often to tell them about good places in St. Louis that are doing good things.”
Indeed, as part of its marketing communications strategy, the $210 million credit union has promoted other good causes on its Facebook page such as the Children’s Miracle Network of St. Louis, St. Louis Children’s Hospital and SSM Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center.
“The truth is most people will get around a brand that does good things ,” said Wood. “So we’ll give them the opportunity to do something good for their community and tell them a story we believe in whether it’s financial, whether it’s a hospital or whether it’s a crisis nursery. We try to get them to feel good about what we do because we spend a lot of time and energy in the community and most credit unions do.”
