About the Nonprofit: Adjoin

Location: San Diego, California
Mission: To create limitless pathways for people to belong where they live, work, learn, and play.

For over four decades, Adjoin has been a quiet force of transformation across California—uplifting lives through community-based programs that champion independence, inclusion, and reintegration. From empowering individuals with disabilities to supporting veterans navigating or adjusting to civilian life, Adjoin’s work is rooted in compassion and driven by purpose.

Their impact is undeniable—but like many deeply personal and vulnerable stories, it hasn’t always been easy to amplify. The richness of their work often lives in personal moments, quiet milestones, and everyday wins that don’t always make it to the spotlight.

That’s where CauseCircle comes in.

The Objectives: What Adjoin Set Out to Achieve

Adjoin’s June Networking Mixer was designed to deepen connections with their existing community while reaching new supporters — both in person and for their digital communities.

One of the key aspects of strengthening these bonds was making their impact visible, making it easy for attendees to participate, share their stories, and ensure those stories could continue driving engagement and awareness long after the event.

“Our main objective for this June Mixer was to increase awareness about Adjoin and our mission to create limitless pathways for people to belong where they live, work, learn, and play. The opportunity to expand our known community and strengthen the bonds that already exist is what made this event a success for Adjoin.”
Victoria Dumon, Executive Operations Manager, Adjoin

The Strategic Problem: Why Great Stories Get Lost — and Why That Matters for Visibility 

Even with a clear goal, nonprofits like Adjoin face a common challenge: capturing, preserving, and putting real stories to work. Here’s what Adjoin — and most nonprofit leaders — are often up against:

1. Stories Lost After Events: Supporters take photos and reflect on their experiences, but those contributions often remain scattered or unseen by the organization itself.

2. Time-Intensive Collection: Gathering, formatting, and securing consent for authentic stories is resource-heavy for small teams.

3. Content Fragmentation: Posts and photos get buried across DMs, emails, and feeds — difficult to compile and repurpose.

4. Unclear Pathways for Supporters: Even eager attendees may not know how or where to share, leading to missed opportunities.

5. Digital Visibility Gap: Social media alone is no longer enough. Amid endless noise and declining organic reach, even compelling stories struggle to break through. How does a good nonprofit get found by communities who care — without paying for attention?

Without a system to solve this, Adjoin — like many nonprofits — risked leaving meaningful stories untold: stories that could inspire, connect, and extend the life of their events far beyond a single day.

The Solution: CauseCircle’s End-to-End Storytelling Infrastructure

Victoria and the Adjoin team recognized these challenges and saw an opportunity to address them by leveraging CauseCircle.

“What excited me about CauseCircle is that it is a place for people looking for nonprofit content to go to and a place for the Adjoin community to share stories together.” - Victoria, Adjoin

With CauseCircle, Adjoin implemented a solution designed to remove friction, enable authentic community participation, and extend the reach and shelf life of their event content — all while reducing the marketing team’s workload.

Before the Event: Building Digital Foundations

1. SEO-Optimized NPO Directory Profile:
   Adjoin’s CauseCircle profile was purpose-built for discoverability — structured content, rich keywords, and schema markup meant the event ranked among the top organic Google search results for “Adjoin Mixer” within days, above platforms like Instagram and Zeffy.

Support Adjoin on CauseCircle >

2. Customizable Promotion Toolkit with Unique Onboarding QR Code:

CauseCircle’s ready-to-use visual templates, unique QR codes, and digital shareables eliminated creative bottlenecks for Adjoin. Their team easily integrated these assets into event signage and communications — ensuring consistent branding and clear, actionable prompts throughout the event.

Every nonprofit on CauseCircle can generate a unique QR code that automatically invites attendees to sign up, follow the nonprofit on CauseCircle, and submit a story directly to that organization.

This easy attendee journey reduces friction, increases participation, and ensures that nonprofits can turn real-world moments into lasting digital engagement.

3. Early-Beta Collaboration:

Adjoin is a part of CauseCircle’s free Beta Program for Nonprofits! As a valued early adopter, Adjoin played an active role in shaping CauseCircle’s product roadmap — sharing feedback that directly informed feature priorities and platform improvements.

Accordingly, they received hands-on pre-event support and were featured prominently in CauseCircle’s Discovery Feed and social channels, helping build momentum and visibility for their June Mixer before the event began.

Learn more about the CC Beta Program for Nonprofits here>

Or talk to us about joining the free Beta Program for Nonprofits >

During the Event: Real-Time Participation and Content Capture

The Adjoin team recognized the value of having a single platform to manage content capture, streamline consent, and enable authentic participation — and they led by example. By modeling engagement themselves, staff encouraged attendees to share moments in real time.

“The ease of storytelling collection takes away from excess emails, missed document attachments, and more. As an org that has multiple divisions and works across the state, it can be difficult to collect stories and content from everyone in a streamlined way. CauseCircle seems like a solution for that.”
Julia Doran, Social Media Assistant at Adjoin

1. Culture of Participation
   Adjoin’s staff set the tone by sharing their own stories early in the event, showing attendees how easy it was to contribute via the CauseCircle app. This leadership encouraged broader community participation and fostered a sense of inclusion.

2. Frictionless, Volunteer-Led Story Collection
   Attendees could submit photos, reflections, and stories directly from their own devices:

• Every submission included built-in, fully documented consent.

• Easy QR Code scan onboarding, uniquely built for Adjoin, created using CauseCircle.

3. CauseCircle Turns Every Story into a Fundraising Opportunity
   Because CauseCircle is purpose-built for nonprofit needs, every submitted story automatically includes a donate button — giving Adjoin’s community a seamless way to support financially while sharing their experiences. All Adjoin had to do was invite people to share; CauseCircle automatically links the donation opportunities for every story.

4. Moderation and Brand Control
   Adjoin’s team used the CauseCircle Admin Dashboard to quickly approve, curate, and manage submitted content — ensuring every story aligned with their mission and values without slowing down the flow of the event.

5. Real-Time StoryStream Activation

Every approved story appeared instantly in StoryStream, a dynamic, live feed accessible via a shareable link. Even though Adjoin did not display StoryStream on-site, this gave them a centralized, ready-to-share content library they could use immediately to engage off-site supporters, stakeholders, and their wider community.

After the Event: Seamless, Fully Consented Content for Marketing Teams

For Adjoin’s marketing team, the value was clear: having all event content in one place, fully consented and ready to use across digital channels — from social media to their website and email campaigns.

“Encouraging people to share photos they take at events and them all being sent to one place helped us with our social media,” said Julia, from the Adjoin Marketing Team.

With CauseCircle, Adjoin’s team could instantly download and repurpose mission-aligned stories, without needing to chase attendees for photos or permissions afterward. Every submission included built-in consent, giving the team a streamlined, compliant content pipeline for marketing, communications, and fundraising.

Adjoin quickly integrated CauseCircle stories into their post-event Instagram posts, like these:

• Instagram Post 1

• Instagram Post 2

Lessons & Strategic Takeaways for Nonprofit Leaders

✅ Don’t Wait for Viral — Plan for Visibility
Viral moments are unpredictable — but long-term discoverability can be built. CauseCircle’s SEO infrastructure ensures every story you collect contributes to your digital footprint, keeping your mission visible long after your event ends.

The more stories your nonprofit shares on CauseCircle, the more search-optimized content you generate — helping your organization appear in Google search, generative AI results, and even local, geo-targeted searches.

Why it works: CauseCircle profiles are structured for SEO and built with geographic tagging in mind. Every story adds fresh, keyword-rich, and location-aware content — exactly what search engines and AI tools prioritize when surfacing relevant, place-based results.

📍 What this means for a real scenario:
When multiple users shared stories about the Adjoin Mixer on CauseCircle, the event ranked on page one of Google — even outranking platforms like Instagram and Zeffy — for the search term "Adjoin Mixer" in San Diego.

So yes — more stories = higher visibility in search, AI tools, and local discovery. Your stories power your visibility. CauseCircle turns them into results.

✅ Quality Stories Matter Too, Apart from Quantity
Even a small number of authentic, heartfelt stories can reshape how your mission is perceived — if they’re surfaced, curated, and shared properly. For Adjoin, this wasn’t just about volume; it was about building lasting bonds. Their community showed up, shared meaningful photos, and now there’s a lasting digital record of the connections created.

Check Adjoin’s Stories on CauseCircle >

✅ Make Storytelling a Shared Responsibility
From volunteers to senior leadership, participation increases when leaders model the behavior. When staff take the first step in sharing stories, it creates permission and momentum for everyone else. Storytelling shouldn't sit solely with your marketing team — it should be embedded across your organization.

✅ Optimize for After the Event
The true ROI of an event isn’t just measured that day; it’s what lives on. CauseCircle gives you a centralized, consent-cleared library of authentic stories that can fuel your communications for months — from social media to newsletters, annual reports, and grant applications. 

Encourage attendees and supporters to contribute stories during and after your events, so your content works harder and lasts longer.

✅ Empower First, Promote Second
Attendee participation improves dramatically when you provide frictionless digital tools. QR codes, ready-made templates, and a branded, easy-to-use interface make it easier for your community to contribute than relying on hashtags or social media tags alone. When supporters know exactly where and how to share, engagement follows.

Generate your unique nonprofit QR Code to prompt stories from your community. Claim your free nonprofit profile on CauseCircle today >

Want to Activate Your Community Like Adjoin?

Claim your free CauseCircle profile and start turning real stories into real impact.

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