Articles: Social Media

Crowdsourcing can help you harness the crowd to increase awareness, cultivate new volunteers, gather information and even get work done—all for a minimal investment. How can you put it to work for you?

Odds are good that your organization is using multiple communications channels to reach people, from social media to direct mail and email to websites and blogs. Because each can attract a different audience, and may be better-suited for certain types and lengths of content, coordinating among them all can be difficult.

Many nonprofits think of innovation as a luxury they can’t afford. Staff time and budgets are limited, and improving the way they use technology seems out of reach. But technology can offer straightforward, inexpensive means of providing higher quality services, and create numerous opportunities to do more with less—even in our current economic climate. Which makes innovation something organizations can no longer afford not to embrace. 

(First published in the September issue of the NTEN: Change journal.) Social media has provided nonprofits with a whole new toolbox for marketing themselves and engaging constituents. Though each tool is a little different, they all create opportunities for your organization to start conversations and to show the personal side of, and the personalities behind, your work.

Sure, you’re on Facebook. Twitter, too. Maybe you have a blog. You put a lot a lot of work into keeping them fresh and updated with pertinent, interesting posts. But aside from the few comments you get now and again, how do you know if anyone is listening to what you have to say?

This article appears in the current issue of the NTEN: Change Journal, available for free with registration.

It's easy to get the impression that everyone is on Facebook these days, and maintaining a presence on the site is increasingly expected of organizations interested in engaging constituents. It seems like a logical assumption that Facebook should also be a good way to attract volunteers--but is that true?

There's a lot of talk these days about privacy issues on Facebook.  What does that mean for you as an organization?  The issues for an organization are different than those facing an individual—but still absolutely something you should be thinking about.  This article was funded through the Idealware Research Fund, with the support of people like you.  Thank you!

If you are already using email communication tools and are equipped to receive online donations through your website, email fundraising is an easy step forward. For a better sense of what's involved, we bring you a look at two smaller organizations and their email fundraising campaigns.

When it comes to online communications, social networking has huge communities of people sharing information with each other. And its rise comes as people question email’s effectiveness—are social networks replacing email as a communications channel?

Nonprofits have a lot of choices when it comes to communications - from direct mail, to websites, to social networking sites and more. With Spam on the rise and open rates down, what role should email play in a successful communications strategy - and when should nonprofits choose to use it?

Successful online communities require more than a software package. In this article, we outline the strategies and features that can help you build online message boards, social networks, or other conversation based sites that become vibrant, useful communities.

In less than two years, The Genocide Intervention Network transformed itself from a small student group to a national non-profit. How did they do it? Among other methods, they used social media sites like MySpace, FaceBook, Flickr, and YouTube to reach the young people who are their core supporters.

Limited budgets don’t have to substantially limit your online advocacy possibilities. Alan Rosenblatt describes the new generation of online tools that help organizations of any size cope with the increasingly complicated internet world.