Deepak Pershads Blog

Social Media for Non-Profit Organizations Challenges and Opportunities

Non-profit organizations face many of the same challenges as business enterprises today, e.g. effective planning, revenue growth, a declining economy, limited resources, and a crowded competitive marketplace. Perhaps one of the greatest low-cost tools for growth for NFPs (Not-for-profits) is social networking. While this post focuses on the Canadian marketplace, many insights may be translatable to other markets as well. Its a crowded marketplace. There are about 80,000 charities registered with the Canada Revenue Agency. The 72,926 charitable organizations are comprised of, in descending order, Religion (31,757), Welfare (12,620), Benefit to Community (12,404), Education (11,801), and Health (4,340).1 Nearly 80% of registered charities are located in Ontario (35%), Quebec (20%), British Columbia (14%), and Alberta (11%), with the remaining charities distributed among the other provinces and territories.2 Resources are limited. Over 40% of charities have no staff at all and 37% have 1 5 employees. Almost half have annual revenues of less than $50,000 and 64% of charities operate in communities with a local mandate. The majority of Canadian charities are small, grassroots organizations that are governed by volunteers and, in many cases, run by volunteers.3 A depressed economy is negatively affecting charitable donations. In addition, the recent economic downturn has taken its toll on Canadian charitable donations. In 2009, Canadian tax filers reported a total of $7.8 billion in charitable donations (see Table 1). This was down approximately 5.4% from the $8.2 billion reported for 2008.4

1 2

The Charities file.ca ibid 3 ibid 4 ibid

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However, Social Networking is a fast-growing sphere for charitable and cause-related donor engagement. In the first three and a half days after the 2004 Tsunami, Canadians donated $20 million to the Canadian Red Cross, CARE Canada, Oxfam Canada, UNICEF Canada and World Vision. Of that amount, $12 million (60%) came in over the Internet.5 While most NFPs use social networking, there is room to grow in the social networking space. Relative to leading consumer brands, many NFPs have low social visibility scores, as illustrated by the examples in the table below. While NFPs clearly do not have the resources of a Kraft Foods, Coca-Cola, or Apple, there are still opportunities to extend and further leverage their social networking presence.

The Charities File.ca

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Examples of Social Visibility Scores

BRAND Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada United Way of Canada Canadian Cancer Society Heart and Stroke Foundation Autism Canada Loblaw's Kraft Coca-Cola Apple

SOCIAL VISIBILITY SCORE 99 97 81 67 56 168 1218 2092 5770

Source: www.howsociable.com
Caveats: The scores shown here are meant to display relative, not absolute values. Other social media monitoring tools may display different results, due to different methodologies. Some simple, low-cost suggestions for NFPs. Here are some simple, no-cost or low-cost suggestions for NFPs to extend their social networking presence beyond their website, Twitter and Facebook accounts, if they arent already doing so.

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Some Suggestions to Better Leverage an NFPs Social Networking Presence GOALS SUGGESTIONS RESOURCES Extend current reach Create accounts and submit blog www.digg.com and awareness of NFP posts, white papers, and event www.stumbleupon.com communications information to : www.slideshare.net Digg www.scribd.com Stumble Upon www.youtube.com/create_account Create accounts at: SlideShare Scribd YouTube (If video content is available Broaden and engage the corporate donor community Create a Google Account for nonprofits and leverage the new Google + features Create a LinkedIn account and Business Page Engage existing corporate donor network, and extend it through introductions to new potential donors Post updates Post events Build awareness of the Develop and run test campaigns on: NFP and broaden Facebook Ads donations base LinkedIn Ads Google AdWords Begin with modest budgets (can be as little as $200 per campaign) to assess if such campaigns can be self-funded Make the NFP web presence more visible to search engines Consider optimizing the NFP website for SEO (search engine optimization) www.google.com/nonprofits/ www.google.com/nonprofits/tips.html# googleplus www.LinkedIn.com

www.Facebook.com/Ads www.linkedin.com/Ads www.google.com/ads/adwords27/

There are no doubt many other ways in which an NFP can increase the effectiveness of their social networking presence, and your suggestions would be welcome.

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