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On September 30th, in collaboration with Generation Success — a Visit.org partner social enterprise “on a mission to create equal access and opportunities” for young professionals — we hosted a workshop for our network of hundreds of social impact organizations ranging from nonprofits to social ventures. The session titled “How to Captivate Audiences Over Zoom” was led by expert facilitator and Generation Success founder, James Adeleke.
To aid our nonprofit and other social impact partners in effectively engaging corporate groups virtually, James brought his extensive experience by modeling virtual facilitation tricks of the trade, such as:
Using interactive Zoom tools like polls and the whiteboard feature
Creating breakout room sessions focused on concrete tasks and with clear instructions
Playing music and sound effects at key moments to keep the energy up
Explaining how to tap into the emotion you want to leave participants with
Displaying The power of storytelling to create investment in your mission in a short period of time
James Adeleke, Founder and CEO of Generation Success
We know from working with our partners that facilitation is a key differentiator between a mediocre experience, and a great one. Even if an organization has the most incredible mission, and the activity planned is thoughtful and impactful, it is the job of the facilitator to help them feel it, and remain invested each step of the way. Through sessions such as this, in addition to the one-on-one advising we provide each of our partners, Visit.org is able to provide our partner organizations with the support needed to succeed.
Social impact leaders who attended left with fresh ideas to bring to their next virtual experience. As Visit.org Nonprofit Training Lead, Athena Hellman, observed,
Many organizations reached out to me during and after the experience raving about their takeaways and letting me know that they already had plans in mind to change up their own events by including interactive tools, integrating testimonials to highlight their impact and more. People were excited. It is not every day that you can hear from an expert facilitator how to spice up your event. No matter your personality or facilitation style, it seems that everyone walked away (or logged off) with something they learned to make their events as engaging as possible.
Indeed, it is the day-to-day work of Visit.org‘s dedicated Nonprofit team to provide our partners with resources to improve their experiences, learn new skills, and better engage folks in supporting their mission. This commitment to and passion for our partners’ missions is what makes all the difference for companies experiencing what we offer.
The Visit.org team is excited to continue providing these types of training and development lessons for nonprofit and social impact organizations in our network. If you are interested in becoming part of our inspiring community, reach out to our team by emailing submissions@visit.org.