From Blogging to YouTubing to Wikis, Nonprofits Are Ahead of Their Corporate Brethren

Our friends in the corporate world like to think they’re setting an example for us nonprofit types to follow, but according to a study cited by Simon van Wyk, founder of the digital marketing company HotHouse Interactive, "charities in the US are outpacing the business world in their use of social media/web 2.0."

The study of the Forbes Magazine list of the 200 largest US charities, called Blogging for the Hearts of Donors found that more than a third of the organisations are blogging, forty-six percent report social media is very important to their fundraising strategy and the majority monitor their online reputation.

Indeed, something like three quarters of those nonprofits studied were using some form of social media – including, podcasts, social networking, video blogging and wikis.

Whilst the authors of the study expected to find that charities were adopting social media, they didn’t expect to find that the technology adoption levels were considerably stronger than corporate America.

As van Wyk notes, the affordability and accessibility of social media allow nonprofits to engage much more easily with their nonprofits. His conclusion is that "investing heavily — in terms of time and strategy — in online communities will surely pay huge dividends to nonprofits and their causes." | 501(c)