NonProfits Dabbling with Social Media–Review of The NonProfit Social Network Survey Report

I have just had the time to review and digest a new report from NTEN about Social Media and Non-Profits. The report, The Non-Profit Social Networking Survey Report, was based on interviews with 980 nonprofit professionals during a month and a half period. I’m going to focus on a few of the more interesting results.

First, Facebook is used by a whopping 74% of survey respondents. Now, this was an online survey, so respondents might be predisposed to be online and connected. Even allowing for this slightly distortion of the sample data, this is a pretty amazing number. According to the survey the most popular use of Facebook and other commercial sites was a traditional marketing role: creating and defining a brand and promoting events.

The next bit of very interesting news was that 80% of organizations surveyed dedicated at least one quarter of a full time employee to social networking activities. Of course, for a large nonprofit, a quarter of a FTE is not significant, but even then, it signifies that organizations are taking it seriously.

Next, I found it interesting how nonprofits promoted their social networking adventures. Offline PR and a traditional website were the most popular ways to promote a social network, which should be no surprise. A full 44% of respondents used Twitter to promote their social network. Really? 44% seems awfully high especially when only 43% of respondents claimed to use Twitter as a social network. Not questioning the validity of the data, just noting that most people who are on Twitter are using it mostly as a marketing tool for their ‘real’ social network.

This survey is, overall, great news for nonprofits and their supporters. This is a pretty amazing penetration level for Facebook; slightly less impressive for YouTube and Twitter. What I find interesting is that nonprofits are leaving quite a bit of ‘money on the table.’ This report specifically shows a failure to use these social networks in new ways. Most of the nonprofits using Facebook use it as a marketing and promotions tool. Less than 40% of nonprofits are using these social networks for fundraising and development and of those, most reported raising less than $500 in the last 12 months. Also interesting is that almost 60% of nonprofits admit that they are not allocating external resources to social networking.

My opinion is that most nonprofits are approaching Social Media the same way they approached websites in general a decade ago. Websites were viewed as non-essential and secondary to the mission of the organization. Most organizations chose to handle all the webmaster duties in-house and did not use design or web professionals. Unfortunately, many organizations still view the web as secondary to, not an essential part of, their mission. My previous article on the Suckiness of Nonprofit Websites chronicles this mistake.

The simple truth is that Social Media is straightforward but far from simple. Organizations that choose to go it alone will have some success, to be sure. Some may even have a great experience and provide valuable information to and connections with their supporters. However, just as with websites a decade ago, the organizations that take Social Media seriously and dedicate resources, money and time, to a successful program will reap the rewards. This doesn’t require hiring a consultant but does require a social media plan or strategy and the successful execution of this plan. Organizations cannot be on all networks and expect a decent ROI. They must focus on one or two networks and dedicate their efforts to those networks, be it Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or others.

And it will pay off for the smart organziations. The numbers don’t lie: Excepting a few outliers, the NTEN survey respondents averaged over 1300 Facebook friends or fans. While there is a cost in acquiring these friends, once friended, the cost of contacting these supporters is almost nothing.