Protect Our Winters Canada (POW Canada), a nonprofit community uniting outdoor enthusiasts, athletes, and industry brands, stands as a force advocating for climate policy and sustainability efforts. Their passion stems from a love for the outdoors, compelling their active involvement in preserving it.
Since its start in 2018, POW Canada has experienced rapid growth, operating a 32,000-strong membership across the nation. The advocacy organization centers its efforts on inspiring, educating, and lobbying for climate action and public policy change.
Kieran Britton, who focuses on community engagement at POW Canada, teamed up with NationBuilder to discuss the transformative impact of their nonprofit organization's unique 'ladder of engagement,' emphasizing the various ways community members can participate beyond financial contributions.
Their strategy focuses on fostering human-centered engagement with the mobilization of stakeholders through events, volunteer opportunities, and inventive challenges to create a strong sense of community belonging and retention.
Among various strategies incorporating engaging advocacy initiatives, POW leverages NationBuilder’s leaderboards to share a real-time measurement of community engagement with gamification techniques. Traditionally, leaderboards are closely linked to fundraising efforts, providing a direct correlation between financial contribution metrics and participant rankings on the leaderboard. Yet, within POW Canada's Game On Program, they have taken a completely different approach. Rather than tying the leaderboard to any financial contributions, POW Canada has adopted a unique real-world approach that makes climate action fun and exciting.
Here’s the step-by-step template: Participants accumulate points by actively engaging in POW's challenges, thereby extending their support to the organization's mission. Whether it's attending a trail clean-up, becoming a member, peer outreach, signing an online petition to elected officials, or sharing on social media platforms, a diverse array of targeted actions exist for individuals to align their contributions with their available resources. Each quarter supporters go into a drawing and unlock the chance to win high-value prizes, incentivizing leadership and deeper engagement within the community with each milestone a gamer crosses.
Their goal is to cut Canada’s carbon emissions in half by 2030, in line with the government’s Emissions Reduction Plan and our Paris Commitments. Not only through individual actions, but through collective impact on a massive scale, this approach to civic engagement transforms into an interactive membership platform that caters to the target audience. NationBuilder gamification initiatives creates a participatory user experience that reflects and responds to the community’s diverse interests while impacting the organization’s mission.
“What I think is really unique about NationBuilder for us here at POW is it allows for us to connect with our community so much further than finances and marketing messaging. It allows us to activate supporters, in a really fun, positive, inspiring way- which is just so true to our roots and our core.”
-Kieren Britton, POW Canada
As a testament to the strength of people-centric initiatives, POW Canada showcases the potential of activated and engaged supporter participation.
Discover the transformative influence of this human-centric advocacy software solution in real-time by connecting with our team during a Live Demo and experience the impact firsthand.
