As The World Shifts

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR NONPROFITS

Let’s start off on the subject of empowering nonprofits in New Zealand with an eye towards leveraging the social media sphere.

The current environment leads us all to believe that we’re deep into a long recession with no end in sight. The questions that now linger in minds of most heads of nonprofits are: How do we survive this and how can we effectively build a capability to gain access to scarce financial resources and supporters?

Only a handful of clever NGOs who have managed to find the answer to these two questions — invest in social media. The rest continue to remain clueless.

The key to survival in these times of stress and pain is really just having enough nous to embrace a new approach. One that widens the support base and one which effectively makes use of technology — technology that helps build capabilities to influence, fundraise and attract other types of support in ways that may not have been imagined. And it’s sustainable.

Constituency-building and fundraising are together, inextricably linked and dependent on communications. The art of attracting would-be grant-giving entities, sponsors and donors is tied strongly to functions that occur much earlier than the actual donation, support or request for funds. They are also tied to the level of trust and satisfaction others have with an organisation’s public profile and brand identity.

I’ve observed that most charities and nonprofit organisations in New Zealand stop short at defining their constituencies more clearly whether these be consumers of their services, sponsors, donors, advocates, volunteers or plain ordinary folk who just want to help. These are the target audiences for which appeals, programmes and services are designed to reach.

When nonprofit organisations begin appreciating that connections between their needs first need to be established in order to reach those who can act on to supply those needs, then it becomes possible for them to define, prioritise, focus and act on it.

Charitable organisations that test the acceptance of their programmes or services through the sounding boards of their constituencies often derive a second benefit from that test — an assessment of their public image with a wide variety of target audiences. An attempt to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the organisation in the minds of its constituents may also uncover a false impression, or an unmet need.

If negative feedback does crop up, many nonprofit organisations would be grateful to learn of such problems before they reach the media or before beginning a programme, service, fundraising appeal campaign or an event that might otherwise fail.

I’m confident that many charities would really want to make use of existing or even emerging web technologies and strategies just so they could get their brand identities and messages across. However, opting to do Do-It-Yourself brochure-type websites usually equates to low-quality, amateurish and static websites. Those things don’t get too far off on the road.

There’s a great opportunity for nonprofit organisations, schools and NGOs of all stripes and types to generate public interest and awareness about themselves in ways that could rival the web presence and support that much larger and more established businesses and organisations enjoy. So I’ve put up a consulting company, Convergent Digital Solutions Ltd., as a vehicle to help address the skills gap perceived by nonprofits as hampering their own progress towards moving forward.

It is a promising development in New Zealand because now it opens up many opportunities for NGOs/nonprofits to engage the Social Web as a way of leveling off the playing field; one that gets their charity brands known better at an accelerated pace, and another that opens up the promotion of cause/s worth supporting on the Web thus contributing to their own long-term sustainability.

The Web restores the banter of the bazaar. We all need to appreciate that it tears down power structures and senseless bureaucracies. It puts everyone in touch with everyone. To speak with a human voice, NGOs must learn to share the concerns of their constituencies and communities. They work best when people inside have the fullest contact possible with people on the outside.

That what we do at Convergent Digital Solutions Ltd.
Visit:  http://www.convergentdigital.co.nz