How Non-Profits Can Leverage Social Media

When I started this blog post, I didn’t know what I was getting into. The concept of social media includes an ever-increasing hodgepodge of methods for keeping in touch with people you know, getting in touch with people you don’t know, and renewing old acquaintances. Social media allows individuals to “broadcast” thoughts and ideas to an audience that may be very small (like this blog), or very large (like the Huffington Post). Social media can interact with mass media to aggregate opinions (as happens on American Idol) or raise money (as happened during the Hope for Haiti concert, which reportedly raised $66 million, largely by donations received via cell phones).

Social media runs the gamut from blogs, to social networking sites like Facebook, to “microblogging” applications like Twitter, to collaboration tools like wikis, and multimedia sites like YouTube for video, Last.fm for music and Flickr for photos. How on earth is a typical non-profit, already working 48 hours a day just to keep the doors open, supposed to make sense of this landscape and actually use it to produce something valuable for the organization?

I asked Jane Kuechle to give us some answers.

I first met Jane when I served on the Issaquah City Council and she worked as the Chief Development Officer for AtWork!, an organization that helps people with disabilities learn marketable skills, find and keep good jobs in the community, and earn wages and benefits that help them escape poverty. We then connected via the social networking site LinkedIn, and I was impressed by how Jane integrated her Twitter feed with her LinkedIn account to produce almost daily updates of her activities with AtWork! But does that activity really produce value for the organization? That was the theme of our interview.

Jane began using social media about two years ago, with the goal of driving traffic to the AtWork! website. By measuring the increase in page visits it is clear that that strategy has worked well. Her roadmap for social media success includes many tools, which she has built one upon another and linked together to create a web of communications with the larger community.

Jane starts out with a blog on the AtWork! website, with entries focusing on how businesses can leverage AtWork! clients in their operation. She then Tweets (to her Twitter followers) about the post and sends a link to it. Those Tweets get “retweeted” as her followers pass the message on to their followers and so on, until there is an ever expanding network of people who have the opportunity to read her blog. She reposts those tweets on LinkedIn, so that their business-focused audience is aware. That blog entry is also reproduced on AtWork’s Facebook Cause page (more on that later).

Jane offered these helpful tips to manage that flood of activity:

• Get organized. Jane spends one day a month creating content (blog entries, headlines for the website, Twitter topics, etc). Her LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter accounts are all linked, so she only has to enter content once. Then, she spends about one-half hour per day online to nuture the network she has created.

• Use social media to generate opportunities. Jane has found that if you follow the press (on Twitter) they will also follow you. That activity has generated three positive press articles and an interview for AtWork’s Executive Director on a local public affairs television show.

• Recognize that social media is a two-way street. Use the tools to comment on articles, blog posts, tweets. That establishes contacts, and those contacts expand your network, which generates even more opportunities. And don’t forget to “retweet” posts that come your way. That strengthens your network by sharing others’ work.

Once you begin thinking about using social media in this way, the possibilities are almost endless. But how about fundraising – does this activity generate revenue for the cause? Jane is not yet convinced that social networking itself is useful for raising money. Most people, she says, are still making gifts via check, but they are interested in understanding your organization in depth before they donate, so driving traffic to your website will indirectly increase contributions.

Facebook provides an avenue for fundraising through their use of Cause pages. AtWork’s Cause page has raised only a modest amount so far, but when Facebook makes it easier to find and access Cause pages, this will become a better option.

Jane has seen other social media fundraising efforts be successful in crisis situations (like Hope for Haiti) and for nationally recognized organizations, but not yet at the local level.

Thanks Jane, for helping us sort through the social media landscape!

So what should we take from this? Social media has evolved rapidly and will continue to do so. There are many opportunities to use social media to make the community aware of your non-profit and build a network of people who will advocate for you to their contacts. This may not have a significant direct revenue impact today, but as innovative ways to link social networks to fundraising are created it will be much easier to leverage the internet for that purpose if you already have a broad-base social media presence. So go ahead – give social media a try. It is already beginning to displace email as the preferred way to connect with volunteers, funders, advocates, and friends. It takes some effort, but the payoff can be well worth it.

Postscript: Jane is retiring from AtWork! to pursue an opportunity in non-profit consulting. Please feel free to contact Jane directly at Kuechle.Consulting@gmail.com after October 1st 2010.