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Simon van Wyk explores the importance of social media for nonprofits and their fundraising strategies.
The major headline coming out of research conducted by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research late last year was that charities in the US are outpacing the business world in their use of social media/web 2.0.
The study of the Forbes Magazine list of the 200 largest US charities, called Blogging for the Hearts of Donors found that more than a third of the organisations are blogging, forty-six percent report social media is very important to their fundraising strategy and the majority monitor their online reputation.
Indeed, something like three quarters of those nonprofits studied were using some form of social media – including, podcasts, social networking, video blogging and wikis.
Whilst the authors of the study expected to find that charities were adopting social media, they didn't expect to find that the technology adoption levels were considerably stronger than corporate America.
Charities and nonprofits are very familiar with social media
In an interview podcasted on the NetSquared blog, Eric Mattson, the study's co-author said "We're somewhat blown away because charities are the largest adopters of some of these technologies." Indeed, maybe it's time to forget about technology-conservatism in this sector. Surely social media is mana from heaven for nonprofits. The value of social media fits with their needs in that it's affordable and accessible. It's engaging, invites participation and helps build community. Certainly it's a quantum leap from the non-profit website of old, characterised by static content and zero opportunities for interaction, let alone engagement.
Eric Mattson added: "We found that in general, charities and nonprofits are very familiar with social media. Charities are very likely to use online video, blogging, podcasting and social networking sites. They are highly engaged with their audience in a variety of ways using Web 2.0 technologies.
"It is also interesting to note that charities are blogging at a higher rate than any group of businesses studied to date and at approximately the same rate as college admission departments."
Also of note from the study was that nonprofits are highly aware of what's going on in the social media space, monitoring their brands and their causes. Almost two-thirds of them were actually listening to these outside conversations.
Blogs of course are rich story-telling spaces. And while the charities in the study reported that their blogs were most often written and managed by their in-house public relations teams, some other charities, like Medecins Sans Frontiers for example, have truly embraced blogging directly from the field, the result of which is real, heart warming and heart wrenching stuff. Typos and poor grammar only add to its sense of authenticity. Its realness. Its cut-through. Its power.
Blogging is obviously one way for not-for-profits to get con |
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