Union Gospel Mission

Challenge

Becoming More Alert to Mentions and Opportunities  

As a charity operating in seven locations throughout the Vancouver area, Union Gospel Mission (UGM) relies on more than good word of mouth to support their cause. Fundraising is often a high priority. In the interest of efficiency, it helps when prospective donors know who UGM is if and when they need support and volunteers. 

The charity has been around for 8 decades, having first opened their doors in 1940. Generating awareness about the work of UGM is as important today as ever, and plugging into what local people think and say about the charity in social media and on broadcast news channels is vital for engagement. 

Union Gospel Mission's communications team is tasked with reporting to senior leaders on community and industry developments. They realized their previous monitoring tool wasn't capturing all of their mentions in social media, especially when people didn't tag them. Their manual searches often came up short as well. After one too many requests for help from their service rep fell on deaf ears, UGM initiated a search for a new solution and partner. 

Communications Manager Jeremy Hunka says, "We have limited resources. We want to be good stewards of what we have."

Solution

More Refined Monitoring and Social Listening Solutions 

Since switching to Meltwater's platform a year ago, UGM can more easily capture and share a higher percentage of news and social mentions with their executives and other stakeholders. Meltwater gives UGM the ability to edit broadcast clips to the exact frame they need directly within the platform. And because the platform's social listening capabilities include the ability to track plain language, they're able to follow and engage in conversations they would otherwise have missed if relying on manual tracking only. 

Easily configured dashboards help the team see at a glance where things stand— reach and advertising value are two of their important data points— and assess whether they're generating sufficient coverage to attract more donations. Real-time reporting is more powerful and streamlined as well. What used to take hours with their old tool now takes minutes, while the reports themselves contain more meaningful content and metrics. 

Time and resource management have become far more efficient with Meltwater. UGM's Jeremy Hunka credits his service rep for always being quick to respond and provide useful tips and guidance, while adding that the platform is really quite intuitive. "I like how so much is automated. The platform keeps things quick and simple."