6 Considerations for a Nonprofit Social Media Policy

I recently wrote about 5 Tips on Growing Nonprofit Social Media Communities with Staff and Volunteers and one of those tips was on establishing a policy to ensure there is control maintained over content and interactions between the ambassadors (staff and volunteers) of your organization and your online communities. It is crucial that a Social Media Policy is established at the onset prior to involving staff and volunteers to ensure that roles, responsibilities and expectations are clearly defined. While putting together your policy it’s important to take several factors into consideration to ensure that it accomplishes your overall goals and maintains the integrity of your organization.

1. Mission & Values – Be sure to begin with and include your nonprofit’s mission and values. These set the tone for your overall policy and serves as the basis of your guidelines. It should also include the purpose of your social media initiatives and the approach your organization intends to take when interacting with (potential) supporters and the public in general via these channels.
2. Define & Assign Roles – Including the specific roles (with titles) and associated responsibilities in the policy will ensure staff and volunteers have a good understanding of the structure and expectations of the initiatives, what role they personally play and who is responsible for creating and sharing content. There is no need to name specific personnel – the title(s) and overviews will suffice.
3. Professional vs. Personal – It’s critical that the policy clearly state what can and cannot be shared on the various networks and the expectation of the preferred language and interactions that can be had with constituents. The emphasis should be on sharing professional cause-related information and not personal information, views or offensive content. A carefully worded outline of staff expectations should include interactions while representing your organization directly and through their personal accounts.
4. Monitoring & Responses – An outline of the type of content, postings and language that will be monitored and how complaints and disparaging comments will be addressed should also be included as part of your policy. Ultimately it’s important to protect the image of your organization and overall brand while addressing negative feedback quickly, directly and consistently. The policy should also outline who will be responsible for responding to any negative comments or feedback and in what manner it will be handled. If there is an order of escalation to be followed, that should also be included.
5. Privacy – Privacy is an essential element of your policy, especially if your nonprofit handles sensitive information. Reviewing and drawing from existing privacy policies and incorporating them into your social media policy will ensure consistency of standards throughout your organization. Also keep in mind to include updates that reference social media in all photo/image/video waiver forms that can be signed by those whose image is being used on the networks you share content on.
6. Legal Advice – Once you have a finalized draft of your policy it’s always important to seek legal advice to ensure that your policy is succinct and covers all the areas of exposure in which your organization wants to protect to avoid legal problems.

Basically, there are definitely advantages to including staff and volunteers into your social media initiatives but it is not without risk and a well-thought out social media policy can help avoid problems for the organization down the road. Taking the time to develop a strong policy that is understood and agreed upon by all participants prior to delegating responsibilities will ensure that the entire team is on the same page and working towards the same social media (and organizational) marketing goals.

Fore more social media information, you can read our Social Media Series which includes posts on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linkedin along with many reports, trends and tips that may help with your social media marketing efforts.

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Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery services, donation caging, donation processing and other donor management services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all contact centre services and mail house operations and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.