Common Knowledge: Two new Social Networking resources for nonprofits

Common Knowledge has published two new resources looking at best practices for nonprofits using social networks.

Social Networks for Nonprofits: New White Paper
Here’s an excerpt:

As you consider how social networking will play a role in your organization, consider what motivates your constituents to join your community. We’ve developed a list of eight reasons people participate in social networks.

1. Social Needs: Participation in the social network fills a basic human need to create relationships and connect with others. Example: A traveling nurse maintains connections with friends back home via Facebook.

2. Emotional Support: The social network provides the space for emotional reinforcement from peers in the network. Example: A mother of an autistic child shares daily parenting challenges with other parents via online discussion groups.

Download the white paper here.

Nonprofit Social Network Survey Results
In this research, we discovered that social networking has become an integral part of nonprofits’ online strategies. In this online survey conducted in March, 2009, 980 respondents representing nonprofits of all sizes and from multiple vertical segments indicate that nearly three-quarters (74.2%) have a presence on Facebook, and 30.9% have one or more social networking communities on their own web site.

Here’s a sneak peek at the survey report:

From the survey, we learned that commercial social networks, especially Facebook, are popular, but average community sizes remain small, and presence is relatively short. Responding nonprofits are allocating small but real resources, staff and budget to their social networks. Survey respondents prefer traditional marketing channels to promote their social networks but are experimenting with new social media channels. For now, there is very little real revenue generated on these communities via fundraising and advertising. A minority of nonprofit survey respondents, about one third, have built and manage their own house social networks, using software from a wide variety of social network software vendors, with no clear leader among these vendors. The members of house social networks are as yet, with just a few exceptions, still relatively small as well.

Download the survey report here.

Posted by npmatrix on May 5th, 2009 at 10:41am