Nonprofit Social Network Survey Released
Posted by Allison Fine on April 28, 2009
NTEN, Common Knowledge, and ThePort released the Nonprofit Social Network Survey Report. The surveyw as conducted in March, 2009, and 929 nonprofits responded representing a really good cross section of the sector by size and issue area.
A few highlights of the findings:
- Among commercial social networks, Facebook is the most popular with 74.1% of non-profit survey respondents maintaining a presence on this commercial site. Community sizes are still small, however, with an average size of just 5,391members. Tenure on Facebook is relatively short, with most nonprofit survey respondents (94.4%) present for 2 years or less. For Twitter, 93.9% of organizations report using this channel for one year or less.
- Good news on the staffing front: 80% of survey respondents are committing at least one-quarter of a full-time staff person to social networking efforts. More than half of nonprofit surveThe communications and marketing departments are most likely to own the social network efforts, with fundraising and executive management the next most common shepherds of nonprofit’s social network projects.
- Very few nonprofit survey respondents are generating real revenue on commercial
or house social networks via fundraising. On Facebook, about 39.9% of respondents
have raised money via fundraising, but 29.1% have raised $500 or less over the past 12
months. - On house social networks (meaning social networking sites started by nonprofits themselves as opposed to commercial sites like Facebook) , 25.2% of nonprofit survey respondents are fundraising, and 1/3 of these fundraisers accumulated $10,000 or more over the last year.
- Among nonprofit survey respondents 30.6% have built one or more house social networks, but here again the community size is relatively small, with 86.6% of house social network-owning nonprofit survey respondents hosting communities of 10,000
members or less.
These survey results are terrifically helpful as a snapshot of where we are as a sector in using social networking sites. I’d love to see a companion qualitative data collection effort to explore the following questions:
- I’d like to know more about what it means that these sites are thought of as “marketing” opportunities for the groups. Is it a chance to “sell” your org to people (I hope not!) or an opportunity to build a community of people who are interested in your cause (I hope so!)
- In that same vein, connecting social networks to programs doesn’t seem to be happening; is that true or simply a limitation of the survey?
- I wonder why groups would choose to set up a house social network rather than use a commercial site? What are the benefits and drawbacks of doing so?
- It’s very interesting and surprising that when asked which metrics they include in their definition of success for their house social networks,
the number of members, and the amount of user-generated content were the leaders, with 68.5% and 68.5%, respectively of respondents including these two variables. Fundraising was the lowest ranked metric with just 16.1% of survey respondents indicating that this
variable was important in measuring the success of their house community. Do the respondents think that fundraising will never be a significant part of the equation for social networking sites? - One of the barriers to using these sites was expertise. I wonder what expertise these groups think that teens on Facebook have that they don’t have?
15 Responses to “Nonprofit Social Network Survey Released”
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Ken Okel said
Thanks for the info. I’ll have to check out the report. I’m curious to find out how many groups established a social media presence in the past year but have hardly done anything with it recently. Simply put, their Facebook page hasn’t been updated in months and is now covered with digital cobwebs.
In these cases, the group did use social media but treated it a bit like a New Year’s Resolution.
Jeff Patrick said
Allison – Thanks for the post on the survey. There’s so little real market research info in the nonprofit sector about online work we thought it would be important to offer up this benchmark data. We hope to make this an annual effort.
Regarding the role of the sites as “marketing” efforts — anecdotally it looks like nonprofits are largely thinking about these communities as captive audiences where the charity can promote their mission, services, and fundraising programs. A traditional or old-school approach to a new technology – fairly common. On an exception basis, some orgs are truly thinking about community building (think Sierra Club at http://www.climatecrossroads.org or Arthritis Foundation at http://www.letsmovetogether.org or their community for rheumatoid arthritis sufferers at community.arthritis.org). As you can see with these examples, the more thoughtful npo’s are absolutely integrating their programs into the communities.
As for the expertise question — contrary to Clay Sharky’s remarks at the NTEN NTC conference – hiring a 23-year old to drive your social networking initiatives at a nonprofit because they use this technology everyday is a bit like hiring a lumberjack to drive the program work at an environmental nonprofit. I grant you both of these demographics will be intimately familiar with the tactical use and practical reality of their respective areas of interest. But neither the 23 year old nor the lumberjack is strategically positioned to understand the broader goals of the organization nor the larger capabilities of the technology. Grow or hire an expert if you want to succeed with this technology. Just like online direct marketing (think email fundraising), if you want to scale your program you need to take a thoughful, smart, disciplined approach to making it work.
James Young said
Jeff,
Agreed. The goals ought to be set by the people who know the mission best, but a lot of organizations need that 23 year old to man the controls in such a way that is natural to the environent. Imagine this. Robert Frost rapping. The man can rhyme, but I’d bet his flow sucked. Sometimes you need a native to do your talking for you.
Ken Okel said
Good point, Jeff. Have the 23 year old operate the chainsaw but the organization pick the forrest.
James Young said
Alison, I have a point of view on why organizations would want a “house” social network. Because the organization has a greater capacity to guide and participate in the conversation within their own social network, they have a greater opportunity to create (train) advocates. Once a person becomes a leader and a legitimate spokesperson for your organization inside your own community, you can ask that person to extend their advocacy to the commercial social networks, where they will build support for you and drive people back to your house social network. Then you start the process over again. It creates a virtuous cycle.
Jeff Patrick said
Thats a great point James. Couldn’t agree more. We are definitely seeing that happen at Sierra Club where they are grooming grassroots and grasstops leaders on social networking communities. SC understood from the beginning that they would want to integrate advocacy and more generally their progammatic work into the community and the level of control, access, and reporting afforded by a house network is simply better.
BTW – another reason house networks are valuable is to provide varying levels of privacy. Health-oriented networks often host communities of folks who are concerned (at different levels) about their employers, insurers, or other parts of their network finding about their health issue. Having a completely closed or partially closed community goes a long way to affording these folks the oppty to get support and advice from their peers but with an appropriate level of privacy.
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