US Nonprofits -- Showing Industry How It’s Done with Social Media

Yes…you read that correctly…the nonprofit sector is sprinting past industry and universities as the leading adopters of social media.

According to a University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research study, nonprofit organizations are embracing all types of social media – to include video blogging, social networking, blogging, podcasting, message boards, wikis – and view them as important to the organization’s future.

Indeed, by 2009, 97 percent of the nonprofits surveyed were using social media, up from 75 percent in 2007.

While use of social networking is number one (at 96 percent usage), Twitter comes in second with 90 percent of surveyed nonprofits putting this tool to use. Surveyed corporations prefer Facebook and LinkedIn, while universities’ top choices include Facebook and Twitter.

Of those surveyed, 42 percent of nonprofits view social media as very important to their fundraising strategies. So, while we may talk about the need for nonprofits to adopt marketing best practices from the private sector, it would appear that they could write the book on using social media.

Check out the study for yourself at: http://www1.umassd.edu/cmr/studiesresearch/charitystudy.cfm.