What Can Social Networking Do for Your Organization?

Early in 2006, Texas-based animal-rescue organization Puppy Passions Rescue and Transport found itself caring for Lola, a dog who was nursing both her own puppies and a litter of orphaned pups. Tragically, Lola was also infected with heartworms, and the organization was having a tough time coming up with the money it needed to pay for her treatment.

To help raise funds to cover Lola's medical care, Puppy Passions requested donations at Care2, an online social network that allows individuals and philanthropic groups to connect with one another using tools such as blogs, messages, and petitions.

"We were extremely overwhelmed at the sudden response from people donating and wanting to help all they could," said Mike Sexton, Puppy Passions' Vice President.

Within just a few days of posting Lola's picture and story on a Care2 message board, Puppy Passions had received the $600 they needed to cover her veterinary bills from online community members touched by Lola's plight.

Care2 is just one of many social networking sites that help nonprofits network, get donations, and share information on the Web. Although popularly known as places where people make friends and find romance, social networking sites can also play a key role in helping your organization achieve its goals.

Social networking platforms give nonprofits a forum for meeting like-minded organizations and potential supporters, and provide a medium for spreading their messages beyond the immediate community, says Alan Rosenblatt, Executive Director of the Internet Advocacy Center.

In this article, we'll examine the online social networking phenomenon, share examples of nonprofits that are using these communities to further their missions, and discuss some of the challenges inherent in Internet-based outreach.

What is Social Networking?

Online social networking involves connecting and sharing information with other like-minded people via the Web. Internet message boards and Yahoo Groups fall under the general category of social networking, as do social bookmarking tools like del.icio.us and Technorati, applications that let users add their own keywords (or tags) to Web pages and blogs. (For more information on tagging and social bookmarking, read TechSoup's article What Is Web 2.0 Anyway?)

On the other hand, friend-of-a-friend (FOAF) social networking sites such as Care2, MySpace, and Friendster are specifically designed to connect individuals and groups directly with others who share common interests and goals.

A typical FOAF network will display a directory of people or topics. When you find someone with similar interests, you can send them a message asking to be added to their contact lists. This in turn allows you to meet other like-minded folks in that person's network, theoretically expanding your organization's contacts more efficiently and quickly than you could in the real world. Your network grows exponentially with each person you add, and you can interact with others using tools such as public and private messages and discussion forums.

Popular FOAF Social Networking Tools: A Brief Rundown

There are hundreds of FOAF social networks on the Internet, each with its own user base and communication tools. In order to spread your organization's message to as many potential volunteers, donors, and similar nonprofits as possible, you might decide that you want to create a profile on a couple of different communities.

On the other hand, your staff may not have the time to update numerous profiles or work with different platforms. Currently, there's no way to manage multiple social network accounts from a single site or application; you have to log into each social networking site to check messages, interact, and discuss topics with that specific community.

When deciding which social networking site your nonprofit should join, consider the features you'll need and the audience you hope to reach. The following is a list of some of the more popular FOAF social networking applications. (For a more complete list, visit our ongoing forums discussion on the topic.) The sites below all offer free memberships, though some provide extra functionality if you pay for a subscription:

Care2:

This site helps activists network and mobilize around specific issues, from human rights to environmental protection. Care2 lets you create or join groups devoted to a cause; start and sign petitions that can be sent to Congress and other lawmakers; share and browse photos; post to message boards; solicit donations; and publicize your organization's events. Currently, Care2 has more than 5 million members.

Flickr:

A community based around digital images, Flickr lets you upload and share your favorite photos. While Flickr doesn't offer individual user blogs, it does allow you to join or form groups where members can upload and share photos.

Flickr also allows you to add comments to your photos and supports tagging, whereby you add a keyword or "tag" to an image so that other users and search engines can find it more easily. And, if you publish your images on Flickr under a Creative Commons license, other users can add them to their blogs, increasing your organization's presence elsewhere on the Web. (For more information about how this type of redistribution licensing works, visit Creative Commons' Licenses page.)

Friendster:

One of the first and best-known social networking applications, Friendster currently boasts nearly 30 million members. Through the site, users can share photos, blog, post to message boards, sort through classified ads, and create and join groups where members can share announcements and engage in discussions. Friendster categorizes groups by subject matter and has a designated section for nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. There, you'll find nonprofit groups ranging from high school students who want to help end global poverty to supporters of Amnesty International.

Gather:

A social networking site with a heavy focus on content, Gather offers plenty of tools for nonprofits that want to share their stories with others. In addition to photos, Gather allows you to publish blogs (called "articles"), which can be tagged and rated according to usefulness by other users. Articles and images with the highest rankings appear on the home page and generally gain more visibility on the site.

Gather also allows users to create and join groups, where they can share images and articles with people who have similar interests. Plans are in the works to add a podcast-publishing feature to the site.

LinkedIn:

Unlike many of the best-known social networking sites, LinkedIn focuses primarily on creating and maintaining professional contacts. You can use the site to touch base with former coworkers and classmates, find people employed in the nonprofit sector, and obtain professional references. The site, currently boasting 5.5 million users, supports the creation of groups, and has a dedicated category for nonprofits. LinkedIn offers plenty of resources for hiring employees, consultants, or service providers. What it doesn't offer are discussions or forums, so if you're looking to chat or talk about a specific topic, you'll have to do that via email or instant messaging or using a different social networking application.

MySpace:

MySpace is an extremely popular social networking site that doesn't cater to a specific audience, unlike more targeted platforms such as LinkedIn or Care2. In February 2006, MySpace was the tenth most visited site on the Internet). Besides offering user blogs and message boards, MySpace has a classified ad section where nonprofits can place job listings for free, and a space where you can announce upcoming events. MySpace lets you create groups or join one of the 10,000-plus groups formed by nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. Unlike other social networking tools, MySpace lets you post videos, making it a good platform for exposing your nonprofit's advocacy films to a larger audience.

Ryze:

Similar in concept to LinkedIn, Ryze also emphasizes professional and career-based networking. Ryze lets users join groups (called "networks") of like-minded people, though you'll have to upgrade to a paying membership in order to create such networks yourself. Other features include the ability to add events, browse classified ads, and post job openings at your organization.

Tribe:

Tribe takes its name from the nearly 45,000 online groups, or "tribes," on its site. Tribes consist of groups of people who gather in Tribe's forums to discuss a specific topic. Members of each tribe can post to message boards, upload photos, or list events that will be of interest to the community. Tribe's groups are what bring the community together, allowing a high level of interaction and discussion. You can also add your favorite RSS feeds to your profile, write a blog, or share links from del.icio.us.

How Nonprofits are Putting Social Networks to Work

While many people regard social networking tools as a fun diversion, some nonprofits are leveraging them to accomplish serious goals, such as increasing their visibility, helping constituents find jobs, and raising awareness about time-sensitive issues.

For instance, Interplast, a nonprofit that provides free reconstructive surgeries to persons in developing countries, uses Flickr to help publicize its work. Interplast Communications and Technology Coordinator Seth Mazow initially began using Flickr in March 2005 when he was looking for an easy way to add images to Interplast's blog. Through Flickr, he quickly realized the benefits of sharing photos online. "Flickr is a very powerful tool," said Mazow, "one that Interplast uses to spread the message about our life-changing surgeries."

Eventually, Mazow began to experiment with Flickr's tagging feature, which has increased the visibility of Interplast's photos in Google search results. He points out that one of the top results for the search term "cleft baby" is a photo from Interplast's Flickr page. Mazow also started a Flickr group called International NGOs so that persons or organizations interested in international aid could share pictures, stories, and ideas.

Professional-networking site LinkedIn proved beneficial to San Pablo, California-based Street Tech, an organization that trains people in computer repair and helps them find jobs. Paul Lamb, Street Tech's founder, cites the lack of a readily available professional network as one of the problems the organization's students face when looking for jobs. Because Street Tech lacks the resources it would need to develop its own online job-search network, students, staffers, supporters, and partner companies created LinkedIn accounts.

Lamb says that Street Tech's experience using LinkedIn yielded promising results. Not only were they able to create a network of professional contacts quickly, the site gave Street Tech students a sense of empowerment and provided them with an easy way to contact prospective employers. "Many Street Tech clients found it daunting to call employers directly," Lamb said, "but [found] emailing [them] through their online network much more comfortable and therefore more effective."

In addition to providing an easy way to network, online communities can help nonprofits spread information quickly and can expose concerned citizens to causes that might otherwise slip under the radar, as Davida Paul, longtime member of Care2, points out. Paul explained that her affiliation with Care2 has helped her learn about issues while there is still time to act.

When a large tract of Swedish old-growth forest was in danger of being cut down, a member of the Care2 Treehuggers group forwarded a donation site to other group members. These members spread the link using Care2's network messaging feature, and it eventually reached Paul, who donated money that helped save the forest. "I never would have even known about that place and its need if it hadn't been for Care2," Paul said.

Navigating Social Network Challenges

Social networks can help your organization connect with similar nonprofits and the general population, but these sites are not without their share of obstacles. In a recent TechSoup online event on social networking, participants discussed some common social networking challenges and offered suggestions for overcoming them

Because many nonprofits lack the time to investigate multiple online communities or manage accounts on a handful of sites, many have suggested that they would benefit from the ability to log onto multiple platforms using a single tool. Although a fully functional, cross-platform social network log-in tool does not currently exist, some discussion participants speculated that a decentralized identity project called OpenID -- which already works with blogging site LiveJournal -- may be a progenitor of a multi-protocol social networking application.

Because each online community has its own unique user base, it can be difficult for an organization to reach all of its potential volunteers, donors, and sympathizers unless it is willing to invest the time and effort to manage profiles on each site. Chris Law, one of Tribe's founders, believes that social networks targeted around a common interest have a great deal of potential for nonprofits hoping to find their audience.

To provide charities with their own targeted social network, Julius Huijnk, an interaction design student at the High School of the Arts in Utrecht, Netherlands, is building a social networking site called Helpalot.org, a platform through which charitable organizations can gain recognition for their work and raise more funds. Huijnk hopes that the site will help users locate charities that match their interests and connect with others who care about the same causes. Although Huijnk isn't sure how soon Helpalot.org will launch, he suggests users follow his progress at Making the Site.

Getting Noticed in the Vast World of Social Networking

Many organizations also struggle with the challenge of standing out on social networking sites that promote thousands of individuals and groups. To help increase their profiles within these communities, some nonprofits and special interest groups are using a service called Word of Blog, which allows an organization to upload its logo to wordofblog.net, where it is transformed into a clickable image (or "badge") that links back to that organization's home page. Word of Blog badges can be freely distributed about the Internet.

"Once your badge is up (on the site)," said Word of Blog founder Matt Turck, "any friend, well-wisher, donor, or supporter can grab the badge (using the HTML snippet) and post it on their own blog or site, thereby advertising and driving traffic to your organization." Turck estimates that hundreds of Word of Blog badges have already been posted on various MySpace blogs, though they can be added to other Web sites as well.

The social networking world can seem vast and intimidating. But if you take the time to research the various communities, visit pages set up by similar nonprofits, try out different features, and determine which tools could help your organization best fulfill its goals, you'll likely discover that social networks have something to offer your nonprofit. And you never know -- you just might make (or be) that connection that helps in ways you could never have imagined otherwise.