Nonprofit fundraising and social media overview part one

While it’s plain to see that the adoption rate for social media amongst nonprofit fundraising professionals continues to grow, there still seems to be a huge variation on which tools are ideal for which tasks and indeed which tasks lend themselves best to social media. I want to write today about a study that was released last year that digs far deeper into the use of social media networking by nonprofits than many others that I’ve seen. Let’s first look at the popularity of various tools and next time the key tasks assigned to them. Then I plan to follow up on how much time is being devoted by nonprofits to social media and also explore just how you can go about gauging the ROI for such duties. It’s not as impossible to do as you may think.

Based on data that was compiled in the early part of 2010 the highest adoption rates of social media tools are probably close to the order you would expect them to be, however there are signs that too many nonprofits throw their hats in the social media ring before developing a structured plan for their social media campaign.

Facebook would be a great example of that which unsurprisingly leads all social media avenues with over 86 percent of all nonprofits operating a Facebook page/account as of 2010, this marked an increase of 16 percent overall from the year before. What the data also exhibits is that it takes time and effort to establish a tangible presence on Facebook, the new influx of nonprofits using Facebook saw the average network size diminish from over 5,300 members to less than half that number by 2,440 members per organization (Facebook fans). The growth in a Facebook network doesn’t come overnight with the process being rather arduous the first 9 to 18 months, with the greatest growth shown after an online presence of more than two years has been noted. Facebook hasn’t peaked yet nor have the applications to be used against a profile page reached full fruition, as recently as last month a new version of the Facebook company page was rolled out which makes the third such change in less than two years.

Twitter meanwhile ranked second for overall use amongst nonprofits with about 60 percent now operating an active twitter account which marks a huge increase year-over-year of 38 percent compared with 2009. I believe that many users tried twitter in a rather unorganized fashion initially, moved away from the tool and then did research or received consultation as to how to best use the tool to network with your donor base; a topic I’ve written about more than once before. Although the medium is not as visual or exciting as Facebook, the various apps and tools available to help better target potential donors on Twitter mean that you don’t need to be an expert in coding or HTML to use Twitter to a fuller extent. Even better news is the fact that the vast majority of Twitter applications at the introductory level at least are completely free.

YouTube failed to gain much ground is gaining ground in the third position with growth from 46 percent slightly up to 48 percent. In all likelihood as YouTube requires a certain amount of expertise and of course budget it might not be the best tool for all nonprofits however changes so far in 2011 show that the company is aggressively trying to garner stronger support from the nonprofit community by building tools specifically aimed at charities. Certainly one to watch and never underestimate the viral appeal of video combined with the fact that the attention span of many Internet users displays evidence that video can be a stronger way to share content than written text in some cases. If you are able to consider video marketing in the next 12 months you should certainly consider doing so.

LinkedIn comes in fourth in overall popularity for 2010 with a very slight increase in usage from nonprofits from 46 percent up to 48 percent. Those numbers surprise me as LinkedIn not only provides far more tools to enhance your profile than ever before but also is seen by many (correctly in my opinion) to be the most interactive, social and professional social media tool that is currently popular enough to be considered. I believe that the adoption rate will return to more rapid growth in the short/intermediate term as quite a few of the improvements I’ve seen on the platform have come since the survey was conducted.

MySpace currently ranks fifth and I would expect if we were to write a similar summary year from now it won’t make the top five, the company is in some financial trouble and even though it has retooled itself the growth of Facebook has at least partly been at the expense of MySpace. While nonprofits still do use the medium, the drop from 26 percent in 2009 to 14 percent in 2010 and isn’t a trend I expect to see change as MySpace is quickly becoming primarily known only for musicians and artists.

You’ll note that each of the social media examples above have some shelf life with none being less than five years old, that being Twitter which celebrated its fifth anniversary last month. Something new is certain to take away the fifth spot from MySpace over the next 12 months and it’s realistic to think that the rapid evolution of social media will result in more new names being added to this list over the next three years. Trying to predict which one isn’t easy but there is a strong chance that it hasn’t even been released yet. On the next post in this series I will have a look at what nonprofits are using social media to accomplish and whether changes are afoot.

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