Lace-Up for Lungs Activity Challenge
Overview
Organization: COPD Foundation
Start Date: 07/2022
End Date: Ongoing
Primary Goal: Goal 1: Empower people with COPD, their families, and caregivers to recognize and reduce the burden of COPD.
Secondary Goal(s):
Objective(s):
- Increase the effectiveness and variety of outreach communication campaigns and activities that utilize evidence-based approaches to raise awareness of COPD, particularly among those at high risk, and help people diagnosed with COPD manage the disease
- Expand opportunities to increase COPD awareness across the public-private spectrum
Collaboration: Nonprofit Megaphone provided Facebook group setup, promotion, and engagement support.
Activity Type: Patient education, Campaign, Support group
Activity Description
Get Active! 31 Minutes for 31 Days in October Activity Challenge was a pilot program targeted to grow our social media community, to raise awareness, and to encourage P2P (peer-to-peer) fundraising via Facebook. We conducted the event as part of our overall Lace-Up for Lungs campaign, which highlights the need for better breathing & lung health, exercise & activity, and quality of life & caring for those impacted by COPD. As part of the campaign, we encourage our Lace-Up for Lungs advocates to share messages about getting diagnosed early. We also encourage participation to help others learn about COPD and the ongoing need for research, education, support, and ultimately a cure for COPD, bronchiectasis, and nontuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) lung disease.Audience
General Audience: Patients, Caregivers or family members, At-risk populations, General Public, Health professionals
Focused Audience: n/a
Program Reach: National
Type of Area: N/A
Setting: Community, Online
Cost and Funding Sources
The activity cost approximately $4,000, balanced against a fundraising total of also approximately $4,000. Costs and fundraising totals will depend on an organization's reach and staffing capacity. We feel that we may be able to manage activities like this in the future without outsourcing administration, which would reduce overall costs (at the expense of staff time).Impact Analysis
Over 1,100 people joined our Facebook group and pledged to get active during October. We continue to see new participants find the group and will be relaunching as an annual event. Individuals who opted to set up fundraisers were sent a complimentary pair of "COPD Lace-Up for Lungs" shoelaces as a thank-you gift. We also promoted the sale of commemorative T-shirts via the Bonfire platform.Internally, we tasked several staff members and volunteers to serve as "ambassadors" to engage the community and encourage participation and discussion throughout the month. Content generated by the Foundation included welcome messages, words of encouragement, fundraising reminders, and awareness prompts. Awareness prompts were considered important as the event also served as a lead up to COPD Awareness Month (November). Much of the overall content was composed of members sharing their daily achievements and cheering each other on.
Advice or Lessons Learned
Communication across the organization is key. We had significant buy-in and participation from internal staff, who also shared messages through personal channels to expand the project's reach. We did find this overall to be an effective community building and support tool. We may consider experimenting with different kinds of challenges in order to keep the activity fresh. The community seemed to be most excited about simply getting moving in some fashion and having the flexibility to choose whatever activity matched their abilities and schedules to meet the challenge.Related Links
Contact Information
COPD Foundation
Senior Director of Development
Miami
Florida