Last week, I wrote an article detailing 3 big reports recently released on nonprofit marketing and fundraising. There is a ton of information in these reports and it can be a little overwhelming trying to sort through it all. I thought it would be helpful to break those reports down based on certain topics. Today we are going to tackle social media.
First off, here are the reports I’m referencing:
2012 Online Marketing Nonprofit Benchmark Index Study (Convio)
2012 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study (M+R and NTEN)
2012 Nonprofit Social Networking Benchmark Report (NTEN, Common Knowledge and Blackbaud)
Convio focused more on email and websites than social media, so we’ll focus on the last two here.
Overall, social media use by nonprofits has seen significant growth, especially in their Facebook and Twitter communities. Average Facebook and Twitter communities grew by 30% and 81%, respectively. (Blackbaud and Common Knowledge)
Community Size
- The M+R report, which studied larger organizations, saw an average of 31,473 fans on Facebook, whereas Blackbaud and Common Knowledge report an average community size of over 8,000 fans.
- To help sort out where you should be, M+R says for every 1,000 members of an email list, the average nonprofit had 103 Facebook fans, 29 Twitter followers and 12 mobile subscribers.
- On average, respondents have 2.1 official Facebook pages and 1.2 official Twitter accounts. (Blackbaud and Common Knowledge)
- The average nonprofit’s community size on LinkedIn dropped significantly in 2012 after gaining in 2011. LinkedIn communities are the lowest they have ever been and are actually lower than MySpace, according to this report. (Blackbaud and Common Knowledge)
- 46% of respondents indicated they were fundraising on Facebook. The most common tactic was an ask for an individual gift followed by event fundraising. (Blackbaud and Common Knowledge)
- Out of respondents who use Facebook advertising only 24% report using Facebook ads for fundraising. The most common uses were awareness and base building. (Blackbaud and Common Knowledge)
- Nonprofits averaged 2.5 actions per 1,000 Facebook users. The “action rate” is calculated as the number of daily “likes” and comments on a page’s content divided by the number of Facebook users. The wildlife and animal welfare sector was a leader in the field with an average action rate of 3 actions per 1,000 Facebook users. (M+R)
Budget and Staffing
Blackbaud and Common Knowledge dug a little deeper into how nonprofits handle social networking internally and found:
- 73% allocate half of a full time employee to managing social networking activities.
- 43% budget $0 for their social networking activities.
- Nonprofits say they spend an average of $3.50 to acquire a Facebook fan, and $2.05 per new Twitter follower.
- Average value of a Facebook Like is $214.81 over 12 months following acquisition.
