Social Media for Non-Profits
by PatrickMason
Image by finishing-school via Flickr
We have been getting a lot of requests from government, association and non-profit organizations around how social media could help them.
Like most organizations, they can site examples of social media campaigns, but don’t see a clear fit for themselves. Moreover, because they are non-profits, they seem a little less sure again of how the tools might apply.
Two researchers at U Mass Dartmouth, Nora Barnes and Eric Mattson studied 200 large nonprofits and found that they are adopting social media faster than business. The study revealed that 75 percent are using some form of social media.
To help explain why, I thought I’d take some time and compile a list of examples of social media projects undertaken by the not-for profit sector.
The first example is a project we are directly involved in now. It is being done on a volunteer basis, so we had $0! This was a terrific challenge, but we figured it out, and had great fun doing it!
The project is still underway so what you see below is the strategy and approach. We will be implementing over summer.
Future posts will be about other projects I have found around the web. I will summarize each post using our OASIS framework for social media projects. That will make the projects easy to follow and understand (hint hint).
Example #1: Provincial Arts Council
Objective:
1) Increase awareness amongst current art patrons and local community members in local art and artists.
2) Increase the sales of art by local artists.
Audience:
Artists:
On-line behaviour - all artists provide digital images of work to Arts council, other than that about 30% use e-mail. Very few have websites. The project had no research budget so it was unknown if/how they participate in any social networks.
Patrons and other Community Members:
On-line behaviour - most have Internet access, browse websites at home and work and use e-mail. Unknown how many participate in social media, or how.
Arts Council:
On-line behaviour - website, repository of digital images of all art, e-mail monthly newsletter to patrons.
Strategy:
Make the Arts Council the hub of a network connecting artists with other patrons, the association and the art viewing public. Mine the digital image repository to promote the art directly to patrons and encourage patron to patron discussion/viewing of the art to further engage and stimulate interest.
Implementation:
Create a visual blog on the Arts Council site. Each post contains a rich picture of a piece of art, the artists name and contact information. Where possible, also provide links to the artists websites.
Promote the blog via the monthly newsletter.
Patrons and other interested community members who subscribe would receive a “fresh piece of art every morning”. Recipients would be be encouraged to comment on the art, and share the picture with their friends via e-mail. E-mails would contain links back to the blog where people could see more art, and subscribe to the daily posts.
Sustainment:
Once per week, the Arts Council creates 5-7 post dated blog posts containing pictures of art to be promoted that week.
The Council newsletter will now include promotional links and other information about he blog, and how to “get your fresh art every day”.
[...] I posted earlier about the attraction of social media tools to the non-profit sector. Because social media can be faster and cheaper than traditional tools it can sometimes be the best way to get the job done. [...]