It was late 2008, and Shawn Hyland was contemplating a change.  As president of Move the Earth (www.youmovetheearth.org),  a faith based ministry, he wanted to establish a separate organization that could bring people together were eager to make a difference in their communities, but weren’t sure how to get started.
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“We wanted to connect people who have personally experienced ‘change’ in their life (former drug addicts, prostitutes, criminal offenses, etc).... and now wanted to reach beyond themselves and change their community and change the world,” Shawn explained.

Historically, grassroots organizations have sprung up through word of mouth, as people from all over unite to work for a cause.  Shawn decided to take that idea and expand it through technology and social media by creating a netroots organization called YOUmovetheearth.org. 

“We see a need to empower passionate people who wanted to know one another based upon the desire to make a difference in certain social problems,” he explained.

But in order to bring--in essence—strangers, together, Shawn needed a site that had the right components to help people find and communicate with each other.

Fortunately, he found rSitez (www.rsitez.com), a social networking site that uniquely fit his needs. “In other social media sites, you have to personally know people to connect with them online or you search for people based on career, education, and pop culture,” he remembered.  “There was no social media site where you search for people based upon their passions to take on certain causes i.e. pro life, environment protection, religious persecution, child abuse, domestic violence, etc.”

The search component that rSitez offered also allows users to perform a geographic search.  For example, once a member has identified a cause, he can then search geographically to find other members near him who are also interested in that cause. 

“This was the perfect way to connect LIKE MINDED people around a cause as an individual,” Shawn said. While major organizations may have mailing lists than can be sorted by state and cause, the average person who wants to make a difference doesn’t usually have access to that information.

Of course, the best site in the world won’t help if it’s not user friendly.  And with the potential for so many individual users, YOUmovetheearth.org had to be easy to navigate.

While Shawn had a clear idea of what he wanted for YOUmovetheearth.org, he didn’t have web building technical skills.  rSitez’ combination of a pre-built site that also allowed for customization was the answer.

A bonus:  the pricing.  As a new organization, money was tight.

“Many other people wanted $10K to build a great site,” Shawn recalled. “rSitez allowed room for growth in their program and a small start up fee.”

Now that his site is up and running, Shawn is very pleased.  The ability to use the site’s web 2.0 tools has really allowed members to reach out to each other.  In fact, his site has been effective in reaching a new generation of members that his mailing list campaign did not. 

The tools rSitez provided, along with great pricing and ability to customize gave Shawn Hyland just what he needed to make the right change.