Social Media for Nonprofits

Do you Tweet? What's your Facebook page like? Ever think of promoting your nonprofit on YouTube? Do you blog? If you answered “no” to these questions, wake up! Whether you do these things or not, I can guarantee your donors or prospective donors are socializing in cyberspace, and more and more they’re using these tools to decide how and where to invest their time or financial resources?

Social media is changing the way we communicate. This was graphically pointed out to me last year. I chaired the stewardship committee for our church. I purposely selected members for the committee from different age groups, knowing that the messages we needed to communicate would be different for different generations. But, I never thought that the vehicles I used to communicate to the committee would need to be different. Early on I realized that the twenty and thirty-somethings on our committee were not responding to emails as I tried to arrange committee meetings. It suddenly occurred to me to send their notices via Facebook rather than email. Within 30 minutes I had responses from all of them.

Wow! If that is how they’re scheduling meetings, think of how neglected your emails will be as you try to communicate about your organization. Even worse, are you still trying to reach this group by snail mail? I’m guessing that never gets opened. And it’s not just the 20- and 30-year olds; the fastest growing segment on social media today is retirees.

What can you do as a nonprofit leader?

Realize that social media is here to stay. - The average blogger is a white, 37-year-old male with an average annual income of nearly $56,000. For a nonprofit, that profile is prime for targeting as a potential donor.

Get started! - When it comes to social media, many people choose to ignore it because they don’t know where to start or assume it’s too expensive. Truth is, it just takes one knowledgeable person to get you started. They may even be on your staff right now. The biggest cost is “time”, but there are many small companies doing this kind of work at an extremely reasonable fee.

Start small and measure your success. - It’s easy to get started and much easier to measure success than with previous fundraising vehicles. You’ll instantly know who is watching your work and who wants to know more. If you use tools to drive visitors to your website, you can learn even more.

Focus on the traditional! - Social media is a new way of building relationships. But it is the "social" part of social media that we need to focus on. Building long-term and more engaged donors will only happen as you build relationships. Social media is a great way to start a dialogue with your donors. The secret is to not let it stop there, but find a way to engage them in the real work of your organization.

Jessica White Associates is here to help you learn how to get started and how to take those next steps from social media to social engagement!