Typical projects. like cleaning up neighborhoods and helping the elderly with repair projects, make great stories for newspapers and magazines, and great visuals for television, particularly if the media are part of the Gannett Company, Inc. which sponsors the event through USA Weekend magazine.
This year, the event will be Saturday, Oct. 24.
You can get tips about planning a volunteer project, and register your plans in the Make a Difference DAYtaBANK. This searchable database will help you recruit volunteers and get recognition for your efforts.
Once your project is registered, you become eligible to receive free breakfast for your volunteers from Newman’s Own. A total of 50 projects (one from each state) will be chosen to receive a donation of Newman’s Own Sweet Enough Cereal to feed their volunteers on Make A Difference Day.
Don’t forget to share your Make a Difference activities with your social media friends and followers:
- Recruit volunteers from your Facebook groups, and Meetup.com.
- You can upload video after the event to Facebook, Twitter and your YouTube channel.
- Upload photos to photo-sharing sites like Flickr.
- Update your Twitter followers throughout the day.
- Report on activities before and after the event at your own blog.
- Thank your volunteers through newspaper and magazine letters to the editors and via social networking.
Your projects—and the accompanyhing publicity—don’t necessarily need to be grandiose. If you’re doing something to benefit your local church, for example, try to get a story into the church bulletin. If you’re helping a local nonprofit, offer to write an article for their newsletter.