How Small Nonprofits Can Leverage Social Media

Small nonprofits should not forget about social media entirely – they should, however, limit their activities to those that are high-leverage and don’t require an on-going investment of time nor attention. In fact, as Beth points out in her comment on my post disagreeing with her, this approach should not be limited to social media investments but to any other time-allocation decision.

So, what’s a small nonprofit to do? How can you have your cake and eat it too?

The first part of my answer is that you can choose to ignore the outcome you’re likely to receive and believe that you will be one of the success stories. That is a fair point and one that I respect as a startup person, after all most startups are expected but we always believe ours will be the one that makes it.

The second part of my answer is for those of you with a more balanced risk profile. To you, I suggest focusing on a few high-leverage activities on social media and forget the rest for now. Specifically, I suggest establishing a presence on the larger platforms (in the same way that you should set up a website) and appropriately handling inbound inquiries (in the same way you would with e-mail and phone):

1. Create a Facebook Page for your organization, populate it with helpful information and resources and invite your supporters to join and invite their friends.
2. Set up a Twitter account, and link it to your Facebook Page so that every time you update your page it’ll also update your Twitter account.
3. If you have a blog you can set up your blog so that it automatically updates your Facebook Page. Alternatively, if you update your constituents via an e-mail newsletter you can use that content to update your Facebook Page. If you have neither a blog nor a newsletter, simply update your Page whenever you have a big update (the kind that would warrant you issuing a press release or adding an announcement on your website).
4. Now that you have a presence on the major social platforms, it’s important to monitor what people are saying about you and to you. Set up some e-mail alerts to let you know whenever someone sends you a message/reply or comments on a post of yours. You should then respond to that feedback in a timely and effective manner in the same way that you would respond to an inbound e-mail. The feedback you receive from your constituents on these platforms can be incredibly valuable, so make sure you’re ready to listen and join the conversation.

This four-legged stool involves a one-time investment of time. Someone well-versed in social media should be able to accomplish #1-3 in an hour or two, while #4 is simply adding a communication channel to your existing mix (assuming you currently respond to e-mails and phone calls!)

What is important about this framework is that it doesn’t entail an on-going investment of time. As I outlined in my prior post, focus is key in any time-strapped organization.

I first learned about social media from John Furrier and Robert Scoble as an intern at PodTech and know full-well that what I’m recommending above is not the absolute best way to be part of the social media conversation. However, I do believe that this is a “60%” solution and the best that many time-constrained small nonprofits can manage. It’s not perfect, but hopefully it’s good enough given the reality.

Finally, it’s important to remain open to extremely high-leverage partnership opportunities through third parties. In these occasions, for a variety of reasons, your partner may take on the brunt of the workload and deliver a lot of value to your organization. On Twitter, the recent #beatcancer campaign (sponsored by ebay and Miller) and Twestival (and subsequent Twestival Local) are good examples. On Facebook, a lot of applications have driven great value to nonprofits – (Lil) Green Patch has donated over $200k to the Nature Conservancy and more recently Zynga’s FarmVille raised nearly $500k for kids in Haiti.

My own experience corroborates this – our company has partnered with both large national nonprofits like the Humane Society and small organizations like Rocket Dog Rescue in San Francisco to raise money for animal rights via Facebook applications. On Twitter, we launched the very successful TwitCause, which has benefited dozens of nonprofits on Twitter (both large and small organizations).

In my next post I’ll cover why I believe that brand partnerships are the key to unlocking social media fundraising for nonprofits.

Why Small Nonprofits Should Tread Lightly with Social Media

After reading Beth Kanter’s post about how small nonprofits can reap success with social media, I felt compelled to write my own post about why I disagree with Beth.

Beth is the person I most respect in the nonprofit social media space, but I often find myself disagreeing with how much emphasis she places on the weight social media should have in a non-profit’s overall resource-allocation.

I’ve had the opportunity to provide free consulting and advice to countless nonprofits over the years, ranging from the largest national and international organizations to smaller community-based outfits. What I consistently hear is that time is a nonprofit’s most scarce resource and that fundraising is the primary goal of public outreach campaigns (with driving awareness or education as a close second). The scarcity of time and attention is especially true for smaller organizations that often have dedicated skeleton crews working around the clock to pursue their goals. Beth focuses on these smaller nonprofits and so will I.

Given the scarcity of time, small nonprofits should primarily look at activities that provide them with the greatest leverage -- those where a small time investment can generate a disproportionate level of returns (either dollars raised or attention generated). Not only that, but I would stress that this time commitment should be concentrated and infrequent rather than spread out over time. A new activity that needs to be done a little bit every day becomes a distraction, fragments your attention, and reduces focus on the things that matter most (actually achieving your organization’s goals and serving your constituents).

When I look at how social media performs based on that “leverage” criteria, it does so very poorly. The expected return from social media is simply too small, and the on-going attention it requires to be done “right” is too fragmented over time.

Beth provides the example of a blog reader as a success story for the value nonprofits can derive from social media. Certainly there are many stories of successful use of social media by nonprofits, but those are exceptions rather than the rule. Making decisions based on evaluating only success cases is akin to playing the lottery because you saw last night’s winner on TV. Certainly Beth knows this and has on multiple occasions provided industry-wide data that is more representative. That said, I believe that most small nonprofits using social media see little to no return on their time invested (and I’m not even counting the steep learning curve that is involved).

On the Causes application on Facebook (arguably the largest-participation in causes on social media), we can calculate some summary statistics from back in July when they announced their $10MM raised milestone (there’s also some varying analyses on the right way to interpret the data):

• Less than 1% of users have made a donation (0.3% to be exact)
• Average dollars per user is 14 cents
• Only 10% of causes have received any money
• Average received per nonprofit is $189 (per cause it falls to $37 per cause)

Sure, Causes does not equal social media, but it’s a (significant) data point we should look at. Now, on to Twitter.

Wefollow is the biggest categorized directory of Twitter users. Its “nonprofit” category has around 4,000 users in it. If we look at the median number of followers for the accounts there we see 250 followers. Taking into account that maybe only around 20-30% of Twitter accounts are active and half have never tweeted, we’re likely talking an expected audience on Twitter of around 60 people.

In the end I find social media a great way to build relationships and establish a presence for a non-profit (which in turn may lead to dollars raised), but not as a direct source for funds, especially for severely time-strapped small nonprofits. I’m sure many (most?) of you may not agree with my point of view and I’d love to be proven wrong, so please comment away. I’ll also write a couple of follow-on posts about how I think small nonprofits can use social media in a selective high-leverage fashion.