My Personal Contributions to Opportunity Finance Network

As my internship comes to a close, I have been able to reflect on my personal contributions to Opportunity Finance Network this summer. The main projects I worked on this summer concerned OFN’s social media accounts and their CDFI Locator webpage, where they receive a majority of their website traffic from. Through the use of Hootsuite and GoogleAnalytics I was able to track OFN’s social media engagement over the past 12 months. They used these metrics and observations in future team meetings. The information that I collected about their most popular social media content will be useful for future posts and make them more aware of what types of posts gain the most attention. Through the data I collected I was able to make surprising observations, such as the most popular age group that visits their website is 25-34 year olds. This is something that they had never took the time to look at because they assumed it would be older professionals (40+ years old).

Next, I joined OFN at a time where they were making a huge transition to SalesForce. This gave me the ability to learn even more about it along side them and contribute to this data transition. More specifically, I worked on their back-end site to update the data that was being pulled into their CDFI Locator, such as the member logos, website links, and bios. This project was ongoing throughout the whole summer and required much work with SalesForce and Excel, as well as proofing and approving hundreds of member listings. Today is my last day and the updated locator has finally gone live, giving all of my work something tangible to now be viewed on their website. Lastly, each OFN member has the opportunity to have a one-page member profile description on the locator for audiences to get to know them more and see their achievements. I was in charge of one-to-one outreach to members who either did not have a member profile or had extremely outdated profiles. Through this direct outreach I was able to get many updates, that will be ongoing after I have left, for member profiles so that the website is now showing the most current and accurate information.

Overall, this summer has been a great learning experience and given me valuable insights into the non-profit business world. As a student I was able to learn from them as well as provide my own insights and observations. Most recently, the Strategic Communications team was trying to come up with fun ways for audiences to be entertained during their upcoming virtual conference and I proposed virtual games such as a puzzle that would reveal more information about a CDFI member once completed, and they actually plan to implement it. They also gave me the opportunity to share more about my experience with OFN and myself on their blog which can be viewed on their company website.