Here’s a cool resource and the product of a collaboration between the folks at Rad Campaign and Craig Newmark (as in, Craigslist Craig) — it’s an infographic illustrating data about how leading nonprofit organizations use social media.
The information is pretty basic but includes numbers on how often top charities post online, how many feature social media buttons on their website front pages, which ones have the most followers, etc. In an email, Rad Campaign’s Allyson Kapin points out something in the data, that “the organization with the highest net income, the YMCA, only posted 19 times to Facebook in two months, but has over 24,000 fans” (note that “net income” refers to the nonprofit’s overall fundraising, not to online-specific fundraising).
Interesting, but I’d suggest that this disparity actually makes sense, since the YMCA has chapters all over the country and hence a natural base of fans. This means that plenty of people are active members and thus primed to associate themselves with the organization online, but the YMCA itself is already raising plenty of money and may not see much need to engage heavily on Facebook. We’ll see if that changes over time, and I’d be curious to see how individual YMCA chapters use Facebook and Twitter versus how the overarching national organization approaches them.
One other note: to see the full graphic, you have to “follow” Craig on Facebook…clever audience-building strategy, my friend!
– cpd
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