Developing Social Media Policies

Nonprofit organizations engaged in social media outreach face numerous risks. One way to minimize risk is to develop policies and procedures. Social media policies have gained popularity in recent years but little research has been conducted about their effectiveness. As a result, nonprofit organizations often develop social media policies without the guidance of best practice models. The Vista Community Clinic responded to this challenge by developing a Technology Outreach Committee. The committee, which includes employees from a variety of programs and departments, meets regularly to discuss strategies, identify challenges, and brainstorm solutions. As this case documents, a team learning approach allows the organization to incorporate diverse skillsets, manage the creative tension between a somewhat bureaucratic organization and a highly fluid social media environment, minimize risks in high risk patient/client outreach, and garner employee confidence in the policy.

Social Media and Civil Society Organizations (CSOS)

This qualitative case study describes and analyzes the use of social media by Amnesty International Norway (AIN), a medium-sized human rights organization. Specifically, the case looks at how and to what extent AIN fulfilled its aims of enhancing information, public debate, and mobilization for campaigns through the use of Facebook and the organization's own website blog. While AIN saw great potentials in using social media, a core question was whether opening up for more lateral communication would lead to a loss of trustworthiness and organizational identity. Although AIN experienced an initial lack of success in using social media to generate response and mobilization in 2011, it was able to develop a powerful social media strategy resulting in high degrees of activity and exchange in 2014. Findings indicated that this change seemed to rely both on the ability of AIN to reflect upon its own governance structures and on the organization's ability to learn from experience.

Social Media as a Tool for Nonprofit Advocacy and Civic Engagement

Blue Star Families is a small nonprofit organization whose goal is to create a virtual community for military families, spouses, children, relatives, and the general public. Founded in 2009 by a group of military spouses, Blue Star Families combines community building and civic engagement with an advocacy role on behalf of military families. Blue Star Families aims to create a cross-sectoral community space that includes other nonprofit organizations, government agencies, private businesses, and private citizens. The organization employs several forms of social media to accomplish its goals. While Blue Star Families has been largely successful in its efforts, the study finds that social media creates challenges for small organizations, particularly in terms of monitoring for appropriate use of the common space by members of the community, acquiring adequate staff resources to analyze usage data, and finding resources to purchase access to more powerful analytics.

Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Success

Peer-to-peer fundraising through social media has gained popularity within the last few years. This case discusses the process one organization, PAWS With A Cause®, took to create and implement a highly successful online peer-to-peer fundraising campaign using the DonorDrive® software. The organization encountered many successes during the campaign due to strong social media planning and infrastructure, a long history of donor support, as well as momentum from constituents who truly cared about the organization. The organization also encountered challenges during a 10-day campaign of training donors who were not tech savvy how to use the DonorDrive® software, gaining staff buy in for social media, and distributing social media responsibilities across the organization. Ultimately, the campaign exceeded its goal and raised over $60,000.

Creating Brand Ambassadors

Membership associations can face specific challenges when it comes to marketing and brand recognition. This case describes how the National Panhellenic Conference (NPC), a membership association for 26 national and international women's fraternal organizations, or “sororities,” addresses these challenges. NPC's mission is to be the premiere advocacy and support organization for the advancement of the sorority experience. However, NPC has traditionally struggled with brand recognition and identity, hampering their mission fulfillment. This chapter illustrates the social media techniques used to engage and inform NPC's key constituents through a virtual event, using a two-pronged approach. The first prong involves deepening engagement to move stakeholders to higher levels of interaction with the association. NPC must effectively communicate with its vast network of members and stakeholders to help generate greater awareness of NPC and promote sorority life in general. The second prong involves using its existing network to amplify NPC's key messages and spread it to those beyond its current network. Outputs and outcomes for the virtual event were used to determine that a defined strategy, as provided in the organization's strategic plan and logic model, impacted overall outcomes.

Microblogging (Weibo) and Environmental Nonprofit Organizations in China

Environmental Nonprofit Organizations (ENPOs) in China have been actively employing microblogging (e.g., Sina Weibo) and other social media. This chapter, with a case of Wuhan FON in a nationwide campaign of “I gauge air quality for my motherland,” examines the key strategies and tactics Chinese ENPOs adopted in using social media to enhance their communicative functions and mobilizing capacities in the unique nonprofit environment of China. The case demonstrates that social media utilization can effectively help Chinese ENPOs in policy advocacy, especially through more efficient information dissemination. This chapter also identifies the major challenges faced by Chinese ENPOs in social media use and the corresponding solutions. It concludes with the discussions on the theoretical and practical implications of the case as well as several promising research avenues in this field.

Enhancing Organizational Capacity through the Use of Social Media

This chapter examines whether and how the use of social media and government funding may enhance the capacity of a nonprofit organization, help fulfill its mission, and facilitate its strategic planning process. Both the organizational capacity and strategic planning literature emphasize the importance of leadership, management, collaboration, and fiscal, technical resources. Using a case study of the American Lung Association in Arizona (ALAA), this chapter finds that government grants and strategic use of social media in nonprofit organizations can lead to increased public awareness of the issues related to their organizational missions, greater fundraising capacity, and enhanced collaboration among their employees.

Aligning the Virtual with the Physical

Social media need to be understood as more than engagement tools as they also impact an organization's internal systems. This chapter analyzes how the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens (The Cummer), a medium-sized museum in Jacksonville, Florida, continues to adapt to both environmental and technical changes to successfully utilize social media, how it has overcome some obstacles, and the challenges it still faces. Using sociotechnical theory as a framework, the intersection of the museum's technical, social, and behavioral systems are brought to the fore to better understand the strategic changes the museum had to undergo to better utilize social media tools to align with its mission. A key component of effective social media use for The Cummer has been its ability to adapt its policies and procedures for online engagement through integration of its online and offline systems, so that online media align with off-line messaging and the dynamic changes in the technological platforms.

Cat Videos for a Cause

This chapter explores the progression of a mid-sized nonprofit organization, the Central Brevard Humane Society (CBHS), as it embraces social media as part of its marketing and communications strategies. This case study explores how CBHS has used Facebook to advance its mission despite experiencing common challenges faced by nonprofit organizations when using social media. CBHS was able to overcome some of these issues through solutions and opportunities that can be used by other mid-sized nonprofit organizations to better integrate social media into their own marketing and communications strategies.

Social Media in Crisis

This case study examines how social media tools were used by a Nonprofit Organization (NPO) to raise money during a catastrophic fire in the Western United States. The fire claimed over 18,000 acres of forestland, nearly 350 homes, and 2 human lives. When it occurred, it was the most catastrophic fire event to hit this community. This case illuminates specific ways in which social media provided the key tools that enabled the creation of this NPO, the sale of hundreds of thousands of tee shirts in one month, and ultimately dollars donated to aid the victims of the fire. This case is unique because it is the story of an organization that was created overnight because individuals in the organization's social system rapidly evaluated and adopted their innovation. Additionally, opinion leaders (particularly those in traditional media) within the social system aided the NPO in rapidly establishing legitimacy with its followers.