How+it+Works


 * How it Works**

Friending the Finish Line is designed to complement the Finish Line Project. We have new content to share that will not be a primary focus for some members of your Finish Line Project team, so that information will be presented separately. But one of the Foundation’s key objectives is integration of an organization’s social media work with its broader children’s health communications, and to model that approach, ongoing technical assistance will be integrated as much as possible to the Finish Line support system.

Friending the Finish Line has three key elements:
 * Project Elements**


 * 1) A flexible, purposeful, and manageable approach to nonprofit social media engagement;
 * 2) Ongoing coaching and learning community opportunities, to help lower the barriers to engaging consistently and effectively on social media; and
 * 3) Opportunities to partner with Foundation national grantees who can model best practices and share practical ideas and solutions.

As with Finish Line, the project is built around a yearlong, one-on-one coaching relationship for each grantee. The anchor for this coaching relationship will be a monthly one-on-one coaching call. These calls will likely last at least 30 minutes, and it is likely the early calls will last up to 60 minutes. Where state Friending the Finish Line team staffing overlaps with Finish Line staffing, we will work with the team to integrate or append monthly social media check-ins with pre-scheduled Finish Line check-ins.

And as with Finish Line, a learning community that brings grantees together to share challenges and accomplishments is an important part of this project. We will work during the project year with the Georgetown Center for Children and Families to integrate social media convening opportunities into all-states Finish Line conference calls, and the Friending the Finish Line Project will have a conference in November 2011.

Friending the Finish Line will offer a password-protected Facebook hub. This resource will serve as a testing ground for outreach efforts, a peer learning forum, and a help desk for participating organizations. Each Friending the Finish Line participant will need to request access to the hub. The name of the group is visible as well as who is in it, but the discussions are private. Only administrators can approve participants. After everyone joins, we can make it “secret” which means no one will be able to see the name of the group or who is in it, but we can’t start that way unless we are friends with all participants.

Grantees will also have access to a project-specific wiki (an online collaboration and document sharing site that allows you to share ideas and materials without computer coding expertise). This will serve as a document library for the project, but it will also serve as a journal – a convenient way for you to record notes about your progress each month.

Friending the Finish Line will wrap in June 2012, with a final learning community convening. In the project’s online engagement spirit, this will be a learning culmination webinar, during which each grantee will review highlights from its own wiki journal, tracing the lessons learned over the project year and sharing challenges and progress with colleagues, coaches, and the Foundation.