Completely revised as of December 1, 2024.
There are a lot of nonprofits using social media (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, the site formerly known as Twitter, BlueSky, Mastodon) and online communities just like they use their web sites: to post to press releases or event announcements, just as a one-way form of communication. And if that's how your nonprofit, NGO or government agency is using social media, then your organization is missing out on most of the benefits you could gain from such, like new donors and volunteers, returning donors and volunteers, greater awareness in your community regarding your work, etc.
Social media platforms are all about engagement. Social media is NOT one-way communication; you want people and organizations to read your information, but you also want them to respond to it and, best of all, share it with their own networks. And they want YOU to respond to what THEY are saying.
Let me be blunt: if your organization or program's social media posts are pretty much just solicitations for donations, announcements of new programs or new items for sale through your organization, and the usual, boring press releases or event announcements, your social media activities are NOT worth following.
But note: social media is NOT a substitute for a web site. Your organization still needs a web site.
It's difficult to write a guide that will cover all social media
use - Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Mastodon, BlueSky, Reddit,
the site formerly known as Twitter, and on and on. Each of these
tools is different and has unique characteristics.
Plus, you can feel pressure to use EVERY tool that comes along.
You do NOT have to.
This guide is meant to help you know what you should be doing, at
minimum, to manage your organization's social media activities -
even if you are an all-volunteer organization with a tiny budget.
Remember that every social media platform is a bit different than
another, so one message often will NOT work exactly across all
platforms: just as you would do a presentation for a group of high
school students that would be very different than a presentation
for a nonprofit serving elderly, retired people, so too will you
do your social media messaging, depending on the platform.
Facebook is still the dominent social media platform for all
adult age groups. If you want to reach people over 45, your
organization has to be on Facebook. And people over 45 probably
make up most of your nonprofit's donor base.
After that, you have to pay attention to what your staff,
volunteers, program participants and others are saying and using.
You have to regularly ask event attendees, "How did you hear about
this event?" You have to regularly ask volunteers, "How did you
hear about us?" Added challenge: it changes every few years.
How a United Nations agency should leverage social media will be different from a US state-wide nonprofit that promotes respect for people with HIV AIDS, and both of those will be different than for a dog rescue nonprofit in a rural area. So there's no such thing as a boiler plate social media plan.
I'll give you an example from a small Habitat for Humanity
affiliate I work with, that serves a rural area. The purpose of
our social media activities is to attract customers to our
ReStore, to encourage volunteering at the affiliate, to encourage
financial donations to the affiliate, to build awareness about the
lack of affordable housing for many working families and to
educate why this is a crisis, and to encourage attendance at our
events, as well as to help people who are or want to be in our
housing partnership programs:
And I manage most of this social media, via scheduling, just once
a week. I schedule a lot of posts three weeks in advance, and just
change things around if something comes up. I check in with it
Monday through Thursdays for a few minutes, to respond to
questions or comments.
That's what works for this local Habitat affiliate - what
works for you will be different, because of who you are trying to
reach. But what I hope my strategy shows is that I have a
strategy, based on what I've learned from observation and
practice, that social media management is not random, and most
definitely shouldn't be left to AI.
Create an account on the most used & the up-&-coming
platforms.
When you start to hear more and more about a social media
platform, you need to create an account on it for your
nonprofit. Even if you have no intention at this point of using
it, claim ownership of what should always be yours: your
organization's name on the social media platform. In the
description, if you are NOT going to use the platform, say your
organizations full name and note that you are more active on
whatever social media platform you are more active on, and also
post your organizations web address.
If you intend to use the account, make sure your description is complete and accurate. Your mission statement may not be the best description; a series of keywords may be better, like #housing #women #WishCity for a nonprofit focused on housing for women in a place called Wish City. You want a description that helps people find you. Put your web address anywhere in your profile where that is allowed.
Remember that, on Facebook, you create a page for your nonprofit, NOT a Facebook account. You create a Facebook page for the organization via your personal Facebook account, the one associated with your own first and last name. You can share that page's management with anyone else who has a Facebook account. But note: you may not want to tie the nonprofit's account to your own, personal Facebook account. That's why a lot of people create a fake account - a first name, a last name, and a bit of a profile, for a fictional person, and then they create the Facebook page from this account. When that social manager leaves the organization, they don't have to disassociate their own, personal account from the nonprofit's Facebook page - they just tell the login and password of the Facebook account they created JUST for social media management to the new person.
Share press releases & announcements.
Post a summary of any press release you send out on the social
media platform(s) of your choice, any event or new hire or
program change you are announcing, or any blog you have
published, etc., and link it back to where you have published
that full press release on your web site. You will have to write
different summaries for different platforms, because they have
different word limits.
For Facebook, a lot of people write the summary and then put
"link in the comments," and then when they publish the post,
they go back to it and add the link in the comments. This is
because Facebook downgrades messaging that has a web link in it.
You will get more viewers if you put the link in the comments.
Share links to videos.
Write a summary of any video you are sharing on YouTube or
Vimeo. Remember that you will have to write different summaries
for different platforms, because they have different word
limits.
And remember: for Facebook, a lot of people write the summary and then put "link in the comments," and then when they publish the post, they go back to it and add the link in the comments. This is because Facebook downgrades messaging that has a web link in it. You will get more viewers if you put the link in the comments.
Share where staff has or will be presenting or
collaborating.
Don't share every meeting your executive director is attending,
but if that person is going to address the morning meeting of
the Chamber of Commerce, or did so, say so. You want to show how
your nonprofit staff are working with other agencies, how they
are reaching out to specific communities, how they are
identified by others as experts, etc. A photo with the post is
even better.
Share successes.
THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT CONTENT OF ALL. Brag about your
organization's work! Did you make a difference in someone's
life? Did your efforts affect legislation? Did you have a record
number of attendees as an event? Did people have fun or
otherwise have a positive experience at some activity you
organized? Share a testimonial from a satisfied client or
collaborator. Your social media should be FLUSH with this
information. This messaging is the most important of all of your
messaging, and affects absolutely everything you are trying to
do, including raising money and recruiting volunteers. Again, a
photo or photos with the post is best.
Use your social media to educate about your cause, not
just your organization.
If your organization is a historical society, don't just post
about your organization; post articles sometimes from other
organizations that talk about the importance of preserving local
history, about the importance of recognizing diverse histories
of an area, etc. If you are an animal shelter, don't just post
about animals you have for adoption or dire fundraising needs -
post about the importance of spaying and neutering pets, or the
dangers to the environment by adopting exotic animals, or the
joys of adopting a senior dog, etc. If you are a theater, don't
just post about your show times and show reviews - post links to
articles by others about the importance of the arts in
communities, how theater can deescalate community tensions, how
it impacts local economies, etc.
Many organizations use social media to sharing information that encourage a change in behavior, or a particular way of viewing an issue, or encouraging general, emotional or mental support for a cause. Depending on the mission of your organization, these could be tweets about:
These could include quotes from famous people, celebrities or politicians that tie to your mission. These absolutely can also include retweets! Retweeting other organizations' is a fantastic way to both promote your cause and to show solidarity with others (and they may even start retweeting you as a result).
Share Volunteer Opportunities & Celebrate Volunteer
Service.
If you need volunteers, say so, and why. You can summarize the
opportunity and then link to the full description on your web
site or VolunteerMatch. Share a photo of volunteers in action
and say what they are doing, what they are accomplishing, and
why their service matters. Spotlight or celebrate a volunteer,
or a group of volunteers.
Use the events feature.
This is one of the most under-utilized social media features on
Facebook and LinkedIn, and it's a shame, because this feature
can help you get the word out about a public event to a MUCH
larger audience, beyond only those who have already "liked" your
page. By putting public events on the Facebook or LinkedIn
events feature, you allow anyone attending to show all of their
friends that they are attending. You also allow anyone to share
that information with anyone else on Facebook. The only caution:
you have to make it clear if this is an event that requires
RSVPs, whether or not you will accept RSVPs sent via Facebook;
most organizations put a note in the description that says, "By
RSVPing to this event here on Facebook, your attendance is NOT
confirmed; please do such-and-such to officially register." You
may have to put a reminder in the comments section as well.
Upload photos.
Seeing the faces of people in action - your clients, your
volunteers, your staff - gets people excited about your
organization. Therefore, you need to be sharing photos regularly
in your status update. And use the alt text function - no
excuses (more on that later).
Regularly ask questions as your social media.
Not regularly inviting feedback is a mistake made by many
nonprofits using social media. Regularly ask a question that
will get your followers commenting. For instance:
Post updates DURING an event.
For micro blogging sites like BlueSky or Mastodon in particular,
posting updates during an event can be a great way to create
lasting excitement about it. Have one of the administrators of
your fan page post to the social media platforms of your choice
from an event they are attending, either one that is sponsored
by your organization or one that your organization is a part of
in some way. Take pictures of people stopping by your booth.
Invite people to come say hello to you wherever you are (Jayne
here. I'm wearing a red sweater and sitting at the couch at
the top of the stairs at the Portland Convention Center. Come
say hi!). That feels spontaneous, and doesn't feel like a
super-structured PR message - and that's what followers want.
You can just post from the office as well: here's our
fabulous AmeriCorps member, starting her last week at our
organization. We appreciate her service so much! Posting
staff and volunteers in action humanizes your organization.
Stagger posts
Don't post 10 status updates within seconds of each other unless
you are live micro-blogging from an event. But with that said,
different platforms respond differently to how often you post.
For instance, users of sites like BlueSky or Mastodon, or, to a
degree, Instagram, don't mind lots of posts in a day, just a few
minutes apart. But most people on Facebook don't like it, and
most communities on Reddit out-and-out ban it.
In the end, only you can decide how much your organization
should post to each social media platform.
Don't post a link or photo with no explanation.
You want to share a web page or newspaper article. Great. But
put in an explanation about WHY you are sharing such.
Encourage donations.
I put this low on the list, not because it's not important, not
because I don't think you should do it regularly, but because if
you don't do all of the aforementioned, your requests for
donations won't generate much income at all. Every post you make
on social media is, in a way, a message that says, "Here is why
we're worth your giving us money."
Polls.
Take a poll among
your followers. What do they think is the most serious
challenge facing the successful meeting of your organization's
mission? What do they think of the theme ideas for your Fall
fund raising event? Which historical figure do they think would
have loved your organization most? Be serious or be irreverent.
A poll a month is a great idea - ask your followers to generate
ideas for polls you could offer.
There are certain things that a nonprofit, NGO, government agency
or other mission-based organization should be doing every day, or
most every day, on social media to make using such worthwhile: to
build trust in your work, to attract more volunteers and financial
donors, to keep your current volunteers and financial donors, to
attract media attention, and to ensure your organization is seen
as relevant and credible by elected officials and the general
public. Here is
the list of DAILY activities you need to be doing on social
media.
Tag people.
Thank the volunteers who helped at your event last week by name if
they are known in the community and/or if they are on the social
media and tagging them would send them a notice: put an @ sign in
front of the name and make sure the link that results goes to the
person who really did help at your event. However, be careful:
some volunteers, and even some employees, may not want to
be named in such a public way, or may not want you to link to
their social media profile (they may not want to be so public
about what they do for your organization, or, they may have photos
and items on their Facebook page that can be seen by everyone and
that some supporters would find offensive); it's a good idea to
ask permission first if you think there is a possibility someone
won't like being named in a status update.
Tag keywords (and add them if you have room to a post).
If your organization is focused on helping the people of Ukraine,
then the first time you say the word Ukraine in a social media
post, you need to write it as #Ukraine. That's because there are
people out there who regularly do searches for this tag, because
they want to see this specific kind of content.
If you are working for Habitat for Humanity, and you have room,
you may want to add #HabitatForHumanity to your message. Note that
the letter of each word is capitalized; this makes it easier for
someone with a sight impairment to read the message.
If you live in a town that has a unique name and you think people
might be searching sometimes for that city name, put it in your
post, if you have room. For Wish City, for instance, you would
write #WishCity. For Portland, Oregon, however, a lot of people
write #PDX, the airport initials for the city. But if you live in
Springfield, given how many Springfields there are in the USA,
#Springfield is probably useless.
I think tags like #children or #houses are useless unless your
content has your place name in it: they are too general to be of
use.
Here are some tags I have used in my social media posts over the
years , depending on the situation, because I know others are
looking for these tags. It should give you an idea of just how
varied tags can be and how different organizations will use them
differently:
| #Ukraine #UNDP #uaTech4Good #MDGs #SDGs #Afghanistan #UNICEF #UNDP #motorcycles #travel |
#volunteers #voluntourism #comm4dev #urbanplanning #poverty #humanitarian #health #WorldToiletDay #equality #watsan |
Don't fill your social media posts with lots of tags! I try to
limit it to three, if I want to use more than one.
If you post a photo or graphic with a social media post, you need
to include alt text: you need to describe the photo in the alt
text feature in such a way that, if a person is sight impaired,
that person knows what's in the photo. The Internet is packed with
great advice on how to write alt text. Do NOT leave it to AI,
because AI frequently does the task WRONG; how a photo is
described depends on WHY you have included the photo. If the photo
is of a volunteer receiving an award, that's what you need to say;
AI may start describing what clothes people are wearing, the
background, or pick out something else that is not important to
the message being conveyed.
Scrolling through videos of a minute or less is something a lot
of people love, and not just young people. But is it worth doing
by your nonprofit?
For 99% of nonprofits, no, it's not worth trying to post short
videos regularly. It's not worth it because the likelihood of it
leading to more donations or more support for your organization,
or greater undersatnding of your cause or a behavior change, is
so, so tiny.
I'm not saying not do it. If your nonprofit comes up with a video
of a minute or less that you think is fun, for whatever reason -
volunteers dancing at a work site, your staff costume parade at
Halloween, demonstrating some weird or fun object at your thrift
store, an adorable animal at your shelter, whatever - absolutely
share it on one of these video channels, make sure you label it
well so people know where it came from, and release it into the
wild. Maybe you get some comments. Maybe you get a 1000 likes in a
day. That's fun! But probably isn't going to cultivate any lasting
relationships, raise funds, etc.
For any videos, with words, you need to close caption the video.
Don't rely just on AI - it may generate the initial captions, but
you need to check them for accuracy.
Some platforms have communities within them where users "gather." Facebook does this. And Reddit is made up of a series of communities (though you can post something just to your Reddit account and people can follow you on the platform).
Finding what communities you should be a part of is a challenge:
you have to do a lot of reading and watching and experimenting, a
lot of trial and error. And because nonprofits are so different,
it's really difficult for me to make exact recommendations.
If your nonprofit serves a specific geographic community, then look for online groups on a social media platform like Facebook or Reddit that is focused specifically on that geographic community.
For whatever cause your nonprofit serves, you might want to look
for communities that are focused on that subject matter, if you
think that community would want to hear about your organization
sometimes. But be especially targeted in your messaging: the
members of the Wish City community may enjoy your posts announcing
an event they can attend, and may even welcome your calls for
volunteers, but they probably don't want to hear about your
executive director's meeting with a state legislator.
Geographic-based communities will welcome your posts about events
and volunteer needs, but probably not requests for donations.
I'm trying to get away from doing web pages focused on just one
social media platform, but on a different page, I have my Nonprofit & NGO Guide to Using Reddit.
Reddit is a very different tool than most social media tools, and
I think it's one of the most under-utilized tools out there,
especially for small nonprofits. I've had amazing success with it
for promoting various nonprofits I work with, as well as my own
web site and services. It reminds me so much of USENET newsgroups,
for those of you who have been around online as long as I have.
It's a fantastic tool for volunteer recruitment and awareness
building and reaching younger audiences, far better than any other
online avenue I have found.
Do I think your nonprofit should establish a profile on Discord?
I haven't yet seen a reason to. I'm there, BTW - watching and
waiting for a nonprofit to change my mind.
Who you follow on social media says a lot about your organization. People will post "following does not mean endorsement", but it is still seen that way by many people. Some of my rules for a nonprofit, NGO, government program, etc. for following others on social media:
Should you follow political parties on social media? You may - but if you do, stick with local offices and follow ALL OF THEM. At a League of Women Voter's affiliate, for instance, I had the account set up to follow all political parties in Oregon - we were focused on getting people to vote and to know where to find information about candidates and legislation, so following all political parties fit into that mandate. A better idea might be to put those groups on a private list, if the social media platform allows such, and check that list regularly to see what they are saying.
You can follow personal accounts - a consultant, an employee or a volunteer's social media account - if those accounts are dedicated primarily to your cause, and there are no posts on those accounts that, in association, would cause someone to doubt the credibility or character of your organization.
Do NOT follow:
I limit my follows on any social media platform to less than
1000. I put absolutely every person I follow on a list on Mastodon
or Bluesky (I used to do this on Twitter, but I've all but
abandoned that platform) and I look at my lists regularly to see,
say, only tweets by accounts that focus on capacity-building for
nonprofits, accounts focused on Afghanistan, or my colleagues.
Facebook and various social media
management platforms let's you schedule posts in advance (in
the case of Facebook, it lets you schedule to both Facebook and
Instagram through its platform up to 29 days
in advance). That means you don't have to generate content
every day - you just need to look like you do. However, if you
do this, you have to remember to check to see what you've
scheduled (what seemed appropriate three weeks ago may not be
now, given someone's death or some change in circumstances,
for instance, or you may have something more urgent to share)
and be ready to make changes. And remember that your photos
must always be Instagram-ready - if they are are bigger, they
will be cropped on Instagram, and often not to your liking.
In addition, scheduling posts can
lead to your thinking you don't have to check social
media every day. In fact, you do. There are several tasks
you need to be doing every day on social media.
I have how to measure success in your use of social media on a
separate page: Evaluating
Online Activities: Online Action Should Create & Support
Offline Action. In summary: I dont' believe number of
followers nor number of shares or likes is a good sign of social
media success. Better measures are seeing greater attendance at
events, greater numbers of volunteers signing up to help, an
increase in donations, etc. - tangible results that
make online activities worth doing.
I
explored the ethics of using Facebook on my blog a few years
ago.
I rarely use the site formerly known as Twitter, because I do not
want to be associated with the current ownership, and because my
use of BlueSky, Mastodon and Reddit have largely replaced how I
was leveraging and benefitting from that platform. But for some
nonprofits, particularly NGOs in developing countries, it's still
the best way for them to get their message out to desired
audiences (but note that is changing RAPIDLY).
There are challenges that nonprofits need to be aware of when using online social networking sites:
Your organization should have a written policy regarding how paid staff and volunteers should and should not engage as representatives of your organization online, including on social media platforms. Make it clear to volunteers, for instance, that while it's fine for them to highlight their role as volunteers for your organization in their online conversations, that does not necessarily make them official representatives of such, and any comments or questions about your organization they see online should be brought to the attention of appropriate member of the organization's core staff.
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