Social Media Strategy for Advocacy Case Study

Case Study: Clergy for a New Drug Policy

Sector: Nonprofit / Social Justice Project: Social Media Management

Sarah Best Strategy provides retainer-based social media management services and social media strategy for advocacy group Clergy for a New Drug Policy (CNDP), a faith-led nonprofit. We built an audience of over 8,000 Facebook fans with a $20/month ad spend over a period of 24 months.

Engagement with influential Twitter followers like Piper Kerman (author of Orange is the New Black) helped grow the audience organically to 580 Twitter followers, while extending the reach of the content to hundreds of thousands of people every month. Currently, CNDP has 890 Twitter followers, and their social media accounts garner an average of 4,000 fan interactions each month.

The Challenge

CNDP’s mission is to mobilize clergy nationally on behalf of an agenda that ends the War on Drugs by allocating resources to education, treatment, and public safety. The Sarah Best Strategy team is proud to support and promote CDNP’s vision of a society in which values of compassion, mercy, and healing, especially concerning drug use, replace our nation’s culture of punishment.

Goals for the campaign were to:

Grow the organization’s audience from zero fans and followers at program launch
Raise awareness of key issues among fans, followers, and influencers
Gain signatures from influential people of faith for the organization’s Religious Declaration for New Drug Policy
Invite people to participate in key advocacy actions (e.g., contacting their legislators about taking action on important policy initiatives)

The Idea: Social Media Strategy for Advocacy

Our work with CNDP started with a one-hour consult, a resource that we offer for nonprofits and small businesses that would like to evaluate their current challenges and goals and come up with a written plan for addressing those challenges and meeting those goals

We were then engaged to set up and manage the organization’s social media channels so that CNDP staff could focus on other important efforts, such as on-the-ground grassroots activism and legislative actions.

Every month, we evaluate what social media content has gotten the broadest reach and engagement, and take note of influential new followers. We use that data to make suggestions about upcoming content and potential guest blog posts.

We implemented (and continue to implement) smart paid and organic strategies to build the audience steadily over time with a modest budget. For a nonprofit or small business, good strategy can trump a large budget when it comes to obtaining great results.

The Results

Facebook posts gained the organization 2500 new fans in one year, and 4800 over the next 17 months, with an efficient Facebook advertising spend of $20/month. Currently, the organization has over 8,000 Facebook fans. Posts are seen between 100K–200K times per month, every month. Fans engage with our content an average of 4k times per month across Facebook and Twitter.
Twitter posts got regular retweets by key influencers who had a broad reach. Influential followers include author Piper Kerman (Orange is the New Black), who has over 110,000 followers. These influencers helped organically grow CNDP’s Twitter audience to 580 followers in the first year of engagement. Currently, CNDP has over 890 Twitter followers.
Our social media retainer package included outreach to influential followers on Twitter and community management. By thanking CNDP’s amazing fans and followers, we encourage them to keep participating and sharing our content. Over time, we have cultivated relationships with individuals and organizations representing a range of religious beliefs, all of whom care deeply about changing America’s unjust drug policies. Notable followers include: Ameya Pawar (17K followers), Chicago Ideas (40K followers), and Rev. Dr. Chuck Currie (12.9K followers).
In 2019, Sarah Best Strategy helped CNDP collaborate with Legalize IL to share each other’s social media posts and increase advocacy for legalization. This strategic partnership, along with CNDP’s coordination with clergy to sign onto an open letter in support of legalization, culminated in Governor Pritzker signing a law making Illinois the 11th state in the Union to legalize adult-use cannabis.