According to a recent study out of U. Mass Dartmouth, it is clear that
…charitable organizations are outpacing the business world in their use of social media. Seventy-five percent of the charitable organizations studied are using some form of social media including blogs, podcasts, message boards, social networking, video blogging and wikis. More than a third of the organizations are blogging. Forty-six percent of those studied report social media is very important to their fundraising strategy.
I am a bit late to the newsroom on this one. Marketing Pilgrim mentioned it in mid-November, and I noticed it on Beth Kanter’s blog as I was catching up on my reading this weekend. Still, it seems notable enough to be worth noting again. And besides, it helps me point to a handful of other things.
First, a big qualifier for this report: it focuses on the 200 largest charities in the U.S, and the business comparison group is the Inc. 500. In other words, this is what’s going on in the big leagues. Two of the Forbes 200—the American Red Cross and the Alzheimer’s Association—showed up as examples in a recent presentation on Learning 2.0 that I did. It was obvious (and not surprising) in gathering examples for that presentation, that big organizations were the easiest place to look.
As Beth notes in her posting, a study earlier this year by the Overbrook Foundation paints a less optimistic picture of Web 2.0 (meaning primarily social media) adoption by nonprofits. Here is some of the most telling language in the summary from the Overbrook report:
Organizations are frantically raising money and do not feel that they have time to stop and think about how they work, how they engage their constituents, and what the most appropriate approaches to social media are for them. This leads to a culture of pushing the new tools away because the groups don’t know enough about them, don’t have the staff to explore and learn about them, and are working in environments that are often on the wrong side of the digital divide. As one participant in the group discussions said, “I think I’m missing something really big, but I don’t know what it is or how to find out what it is.”
Sound familiar? The Overbrook Foundation report focuses specifically on human rights organizations, and the size of the nonprofits involved cover a much wider range than is exemplified by the top 200 nonprofits. Not that large charities are immune from the type of culture described above, but certainly it is more entrenched in smaller charities—and for that matter, smaller associations that are scrapping for members, or small businesses that are obsessed with cash flow.
I’ve seen the same thing happen with online learning. Taking a look through the Forbes list of the Top 200 charities, I can pick out dozens that I know have substantial e-learning initiatives underway. Not as true among smaller nonprofits, though fortunately there is evidence that the situation is changing—probably due in no small part to decreasing costs and increased usability of e-learning software, and to at least some extent, the growth of the open educational resources movement.
Much of what is available in the social media world has the advantage over early (and most current) e-learning software options of being free. And certainly groups like TechSoup are doing great work supporting social media usage by smaller nonprofits. Still, I see so many small organizations struggle with social media opportunities or miss out on them entirely.
I’m greatly heartened that a good model seems to be developing in the big leagues, but given that there are more than a million nonprofit organizations out there right now (see the National Center for Charitable Statistics for numbers) –most of them quite small—I’m certain there is still plenty of work to be done.
JTC
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