St. Jude

The non-profit organization I decided to research for this assignment was the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. I remember hearing about them many years ago when I was in middle school, which means they have been around for a while and at the time they were branching out to public schools for donations. With more technology now most non-profit organizations have it easier by using social networks to spread awareness. On St. Jude’s main website they have their mission statement that says, “The mission of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is to advance cures, and means of prevention, for pediatric catastrophic diseases through research and treatment. Consistent with the vision of our founder Danny Thomas, no child is denied treatment based on race, religion or a family's ability to pay”. The organization has an account on Facebook where the site even gives a total of the number of followers, which is 1.7 Million. On the Facebook site it even states that 103.7 people are talking about the organization. In the last week they got a 13% increase on the number of likes on Facebook. As their cover photo there is a four year old girl named Khamoni and she has leukemia. The photo as says “Because of you we can keep finding cures”, which sends positive message to the followers. People enjoy knowing that they are doing good and getting encouraging words. It seems that by being nice and supportive the organization can continue to motivate donators to give. One of the recent pictures posted talks about Halloween which is coming up soon and has a smiling boy. Everyone gets into the holiday mood and can stop by the picture and read the sentence to get informed. The site is advertising its merchandise with the child and talking about Halloween. They are very clever in using happy pictures instead of depressing visuals all the time. On Social Bakers an online article discussed statistics about St. Jude’s Hospital and Facebook. One of the interesting facts is that about 93% of St. Jude followers are from the United States which makes sense because we are online for large amounts of time and the organization is based from here. With Facebook the hospital has been able to reach Puerto Rico, Mexico, Canada, and even as far as the United Kingdom. The numbers in those countries are smaller but because of online technology other outside people can be aware of the positive mission that St. Jude Children’s Research hospital has. The visual social strategies are similar to Charity: Water but are different from other organizations like weSPARK Cancer Support Center which has barely 3000 followers on Facebook.

www.stjude.org/stjude/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=9dc4b8ca05604210VgnVCM1000001e0215acRCRD&vgnextchannel=f67c1e3d40419210VgnVCM1000001e0215acRCRD

www.facebook.com/stjude

www.socialbakers.com/facebook-pages/6435441794-st-jude-children-s-research-hospital