Technology Strategy for Non Profits - Social Networks
Many of the challenges faced by non profit organizations (NPOs) make them prime candidates for leveraging social network tools successfully. The fact that social network tools are free for the most part, volunteer driven, give everyone a chance to participate in the mission and that they are excellent for communication to a dispersed audience make them ideal for use in the non profit sector.
NPO’s in my experience also either tap into a younger demographic volunteer force or they will need to to stay relevant in their mission. The trend towards “communitainment” and social networking means that people are more discriminating about how they network and how they spend they’re non “working” hours. More and more people meet online and then network face to face as opposed to the opposite as a norm.
Currently the most popular social networking platforms are:
Source: Nielsen Online
Each social network offers different audiences and benefits to the NPO. Twitter is the fastest growing social network by far although it doesn’t yet approach Facebook in terms of sheer numbers. ASTDHouston (@astdhouston) has adopted a social networking strategy that utilizes Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Twitter provides the ability to both listen and broadcast tweets to those who are involved with the mission of the organization. It also provides a voice in the local community that represent the training and development point of view. Tweets can be displayed at meetings and during conference events via a twitter fountain to promote the twitter community.
LinkedIn provides the ability to connect the NPO members in ways and during times that might not ordinarily by accessible to an organization that only has a monthly meeting. Using LinkedIn provides members the ability to leverage the NPO connections they make in the real world and vice versa. It also provides members to real time access to promote awareness of important events and access to expertise that would be difficult to communicate during normal business hours. The group functionality is very complimentary to the needs of connecting groups of like minded people.
Facebook is currently the last piece of the social network platform and although currently the least utilized, has the most potential from a demographic perspective because of the sheer numbers of people on the platform. There are over 100 million people using Facebook and as more audiences open up globally that number has a lot of headroom to grow. It’s also attractive to organizations that need to tap into the energy of a younger and more energetic audience. Facebookers are doer’s and passionate about causes in my opinion.
For a more complete listing of social networks go here or here.
