A surprising number of people talk about their feet on Twitter, but the American Podiatric Medical Association (APMA) was most interested in reaching out to podiatric medical students and people who had a medical question or interest. They wanted to grow a passionate community of active contributors, not just grow in sheer number of followers. They needed software to help them target the right people, connect with them and keep track of those key relationships. Using Thrive’s ability to tag contacts with relevant labels to categorize them, they were able to target specific podiatric medical students and let them know when the APMA recruitment person was going to be on their campus. They got an amazing response to those efforts, and even met all their social media goals for 2011 in three months, which they attribute to their use of Thrive.

The Catalogue for Philanthropy: Greater Washington, a family of more than 300 nonprofits located in the Washington metropolitan area, needed to build their online community. But staff limitations mandated a simplified social media solution. With so much happening at the Catalogue, there was little time to spare for Twitter and Facebook. That meant the person tasked with cultivating audiences on those platforms required a particularly efficient tool. The Catalogue found that tool in Thrive. It enabled the organization to swiftly build their online network. The Catalogue now feels better connected to its supporters and partners.

The head of fundraising marketing and communications for Children’s National said the organization aims to use social media to support marketing goals and improve children’s health, even for families who may never visit the hospital. As such, growing their community and deepening engagement with parents by sharing practical information is a big part of their strategy. They really appreciated the user-friendly, intuitive design of the Thrive platform, saying it “combines the functionality of the best Twitter tools all in one place.”

GlobalGiving’s early forays into social media were well received and quickly grew their audience, but the organization was challenged to clearly quantify the actual returns on that investment. Thrive’s powerful Reports function allowed GlobalGiving to dig into their social media statistics, and in doing so, they learned that one tweet directly generated $1,676 in donations. The message ultimately netted GlobalGiving about 20 new donors and helped demonstrate the power of social media. That valuable information was gleaned because GlobalGiving could track each message’s effectiveness through Thrive.

The Military Officers Association of America, a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization, is the nation’s largest association of military officers. Because the average MOAA member is 72 years old, the organization needed to better engage younger crowds. MOAA knew they could reach those crowds on social media, but weren’t sure how to best measure the effectiveness of that outreach. Using the many tracking tools available in Thrive, MOAA quickly learned what messages best resonated with their audiences on Twitter and Facebook. The organization could see — for  the first time — the appetite for information and extent of their reach.

National Geographic Entertainment wanted to make their latest documentary a smash hit, but they couldn’t afford the usual marketing trimmings of a big-budget Hollywood movie. Small Act developed a plan to grow and maintain a community specific to the film on Facebook and Twitter, raise awareness for the film, and interact with organizations related to the film via social media platforms. Within just two months, Small Act had cultivated a large, dedicated, passionate group that made it their personal mission to drive this film into the conscience of Americans. Fans shared advice with one another, answered each other’s questions, and coordinated road trips: all signs of a thriving online community.

A grassroots advocacy and campaigning organization that fights extreme poverty and preventable disease, ONE doesn’t ask for your money. They ask for your voice. That’s why ONE must effectively harness their many supporters on the social web to advance their mission. Many of ONE’s 2 million members follow the organization on Facebook and Twitter. But it wasn’t entirely clear what messages were most resonating with their community. ONE got the data they needed from Thrive. Thrive’s powerful Reports function allowed ONE’s new media team to move past cumbersome spreadsheet calculations and dive right into analysis.