“The most important takeaway from this process was the mobilization of our team”
Claudia Abrudan, Oradea Community Foundation
Our digital transformation challenge
Before the Covid19 pandemic, we were organizaing a number of events with many participants: Swhimathon, 11even, Bihor Community Gala and also workshops for children, which take place in Comuniteca. Comuniteca was designed to be an active community space, a center were we are bringing together the community: NGOs, initiative groups and individuals that are involved in different projects and activities for the community. Another functionality of the space is to provide free workshops for kids with the purpose to help them discover their passions by exposing them to various fields of activities. We encourage them to explore diverse opportunities offering them support in identifying the path they would like to follow for their careers. Comuniteca is also hosting our youth program the Youth Community, currently 40 teenagers are enrolled in the program. With all the restrictions imposed by the pandemic context, the biggest challenge for us was to adapt all activities to the online environment and to continue all the projects started in the past.
Because the specificity of the Oradea Community Foundation is to be a point of contact between active people in the community, we are sure that if we had not tried to adapt, we would have lost contact with the community, with our donors, sponsors and beneficiaries. Also, our projects would have taken a too long break making it very difficult to re-implement them later.
Our solution
The solution we found was to adapt the activities to the online environment, creating as many possibilities as possible to move the activities online. We purchased the necessary equipment for live broadcasts, therefore some of the workshops we run in the Comuniteca before, started to be broadcasted live. We did the same with 11even and Swimathon events
– we adapted them to the online environment. We also carried out fundraising campaigns with the help of social networks, for disadvantaged children from the Scholarship Fund. We have started to use our website more frequently, so now we are in the process of creating a new and more user-friendly website. The site will be designed as a blogging space were we will be able to share the news form our activities on a timely manner with no intervention of the site administrator. We are hoping to launch the new website no later then the end of June.
Now we are in the process of improving online campaigns, we understood the importance of designing a campaign, so for each campaign we collaborate with companies specialized in this regard. We also collaborated with specialized companies to advise us in organizing events online, to ensure the greatest possible success. We are constantly adapting, we are always following the trend of community activities and we are always open to new possibilities.
The effect of the solution we found is that we managed to keep the number of donors constant, we managed to keep in touch with the people in the community and to continue all the projects we started before the pandemic.
Takeaways from the action learning process
The most important takeaway from this process was the mobilization of our team.
Even though during this period we worked mostly from home, we managed to coordinate and work efficiently.
Issues that remain unresolved
The most difficult thing was to find the number of participants in online events, given that people spend now more and more time in front of the screens (either for school or for work). People need to socialize in the offline environment and they are somewhat saturated with all the events, conferences, courses that take place online.
Find out more about the Oradea Community Foundation here:
www.fundatiacomunitaraoradea.ro
