The “Social Web”: The Power of Social Networking for the Social Sector

It is often the case that nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations lag behind their peers in the private sector in technology adoption.  Many organizations are either risk-averse or under-resourced and therefore hesitant to embrace new technology tools.  In the case of social networking this would be a grave mistake.  Issue-based organizations are perhaps uniquely suited to take advantage of the momentum behind “Web 2.0” and tools like blogs, wikis, podcasts and social networks.  There are a myriad of uses for nonprofit organizations and arguably better reasons for adoption by their advocates, donors and volunteers.  These organizations have existing networks of people who care passionately about their causes.  Consumer generated media and social networking enable these organizations to expand their reach, increase the efficiency of dollars spent, and empower their supporters with another mechanism to actively engage with the organization and its cause.

Political and advocacy organizations were the first to employ these tools, which successfully translate and amplify offline grassroots politicking.  The 2004 Presidential campaign of Howard Dean was one of the earliest and most successful, and there is much to be learned from it.  But there have been many other successful e-advocacy organizations, with Move On and Meet Up being perhaps the most visible.  For most nonprofits the goal is similar but a bit less inflammatory: catalyze people who are passionate about the cause to become ambassadors/advocates for the organization, and nurture their long-term engagement.  This may take many forms including enriching the experience, expanding reach to new markets, audiences and donor pools, and audience/membership development. 

Nonprofits are experimenting with blogs, podcasts, and other forms of consumer generated media.  National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting Service, and the lobbying arm of the Association of Public Television Stations introduced a joint web site in April.  The goal of the site is  to generate grass-roots messages to members of Congress.  In late May TechSoup, a project of CompuMentor, will host one of the first “Web 2.0” conferences for the nonprofit community, in San Jose, California.  The goal of the conference is to help organizations understand the potential for the “social web” and its role in helping them accomplish their missions.  TechSoup recently hosted a webinar on social networking for nonprofits.  Next generation social networking sites like CollectiveX are also helping nonprofits strengthen member engagement and achieve their goals through group communications, coordination and networking tools.

For nonprofits and other membership organizations, social networking presents an opportunity to amplify in the digital world what people have been doing all along offline – coming together around a shared cause or vision and working to make it happen.  Along the way friendships are formed and professional relationships develop.  Social networking in this case doesn’t mean random hook-ups in “cyberspace”.  Instead it represents the ability to leverage the digital “global village” to achieve worthy goals with like-minded individuals.

(Disclosure:  I provide strategic consulting to CollectiveX.   Regular MarketerBlog readers will note that this is a reprise/revision of a post on a similar topic from December of 2005.)

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CGM, Consumer Generated Media Nonprofit, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Web, Web 2.0