Press Coverage

Thanks all of you who blogged about our Nonprofit Social Network Survey results. In particular we wanted to thank Matthew Burnett at Technola, Allison Fine at A.Fine Blog, Beth Kanter at Beth’s Blog, and Regina Mahone and Mitch Nauffts at Philantopic.

Allison in particular challenged us to further explain what organizations mean when they identify social media as marketing opportunities. Anecdotally it looks like nonprofits are thinking about online social networks as captive audiences where the charity can promote their mission, services, and fundraising programs. This traditional or old-school approach to a new technology is fairly widespread.

However there are a few organizations that are looking to use online social networks as a way to actively build communities around a cause. For example, Sierra Club's ClimateCrossroads.org and the Arthritis Foundation's LetsMoveTogether.org, or their community for rheumatoid arthritis sufferers at community.arthritis.org, are socially enabling their programs and building communities to support these mission-based initiatives. Some organizations are looking to use social networks as a way to provide a service and a community of support for their beneficiaries. We're launching several of these communities now - more on this in upcoming white papers.

Beth Kanter has great insights on the metrics that nonprofits use to gauge the success of their house social networks. As more organizations move beyond using social networks for traditional marketing, Beth suggests that non-profits will increasingly track the level of engagement and return on relationships (ROI) as vital success metrics.