[Update 11:15AM Nov. 1st, 2010 - some organizations that we missed in the original list have contacted us, and we have since added @echoinggreen and @socialedge.]
Which nonprofits wield the most influence on Twitter?
It’s not one of America’s most established or best-known organizations. It’s Charity: Water, a new global-development group that has 1.3 million followers, far more than any other charitable group we could find.
To come up with a list of the top groups on Twitter, based on their number of followers, we only considered an organization’s official Twitter page. We did not add up followers for organizations with multiple pages (United Way Worldwide, for example, has dozens of local organizations), and we did not include well-known personal accounts associated with an organization. (Otherwise, Doug Ulman, president of Livestrong, the charity founded by the cyclist Lance Armstrong, would have been near the top with his more than 990,000 followers.)
Following are the counts for the top charities, based on how many followers they had as of the middle of this week.
- Charity: Water (@charitywater) 1,308,128
- Room to Read (@RoomtoRead) 457,158
- ONE (@ONECampaign) 452,002
- The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (@gatesfoundation) 430,549
- DoSomething.org (@dosomething) 366,737
- Water.org (@Water) 365,230
- Creative Commons (@creativecommons) 364,809
- Kiva (@Kiva) 357,148
- Care (@CARE) 350,785
- Social Edge (@socialedge) 350,333
- The Case Foundation (@CaseFoundation) 338,283
- Echoing Green (@echoinggreen) 333,807
- Acumen Fund (@acumenfund) 326,138
- Ashoka (@AshokaTweets) 322,734
- Skoll Foundation (@SkollFoundation) 320,057
- Samasource (@Samasource) 314,298
- Witness (@witnessorg) 276,553
- Unicef (@UNICEF) 209,690
- American Red Cross (@RedCross) 208,660
- World Wildlife Fund (@WWF) 159,353
Attracting a lot of followers is not the sole indicator of an organization’s ability to make a difference or raise money and attention. Only four organizations from the top 20 Twitter list appear on The Chronicle’s latest survey of the top 400 nonprofit organizations ranked by private donations: Red Cross (13), Unicef (21), Care (33), and World Wildlife Fund (173).
And while Charity: Water seems like a runaway winner, part of its Twitter popularity stems from a personal endorsement by Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder. Room to Read, a Seattle charity that builds libraries in the developing world, the second-ranked charity on this list, has also collaborated with Twitter.
Have we missed any organizations? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.
10 Responses to The Top 20 Nonprofit Groups on Twitter
nextgencharity - October 28, 2010 at 11:40 am
I think charity:water’s twitter success isn’t tied to their relationship with Biz Stone but because twitter is a central tool for their marketing and fundraising strategy. Their successful “mycharitywater” vehicle for scalable marketing and fundraising, largely uses twitter to galvanize their people to action.
As I look at the list, most other orgs have large followings because of their national reach and not because they really use twitter effectively. At least not as well as charity: water.
kristenputnam - October 28, 2010 at 12:28 pm
This is terrific, thanks so much for compiling this list! I will be sure to follow and promote them via Twitter.
–Kris Putnam-Walkerly
@philanthropy411
adrianadunn - October 28, 2010 at 3:58 pm
It’s also important to note that several of these organizations were selected by Twitter to be listed as “Suggested Users” back in 2009. In one case, being listed as a Suggested User accelerated the pace at which an account added users by 300%.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/02/twitter-suggest.html
Adriana Dunn
@adrianadunn
derekl - October 28, 2010 at 4:50 pm
@adriana you’re exactly right, getting noticed and subsequently endorsed by Twitter is probably THE fastest way to garner large followings. It certainly muddies the distinction between organizations that are adept at using Twitter, organizations that were household names to begin with, and organizations that at one point found themselves on said “Suggested Users” list (and these categories of course aren’t mutually exclusive).
@nextgencharity while I wouldn’t say that Charity: Water owes their entire following to Biz–and certainly their social media & website are top-notch–I don’t think we can ignore it either. Meanwhile, there are plenty of nonprofits that use Twitter very well, in fact base much of their operation on it, and fell well short of this list (an upcoming article in this next issue profiles several of these).
A lot of people talk about Twitter as a ‘tool,’ and that implies that it’s just something you use, like a hammer. I think one of the implications of this chart is that the relationship is much more fluid than that metaphor would suggest.
rwexler648 - October 28, 2010 at 4:55 pm
Influence IS more than followers. We’re a tiny organization with only a few hundred official Twitter followers. But we’re not using Twitter to gain followers or donations – we’re using it to accomplish our core mission: changing child welfare by changing media coverage of child welfare, foster care and family preservation.
According to the Wefollow Twitter directory, of all those who tweet about foster care, we’re the seventh most influential; of all those who Tweet about child welfare, we’re third most influential, in both cases surpassing plenty of groups with more followers.
Richard Wexler
Executive Director
National Coalition for Child Protection Reform
http://www.nccpr.org
@nccpr
socialgiving - October 28, 2010 at 6:40 pm
Content is king. These are some great Non-profits with a huge presence when we talk about twitter followers. Although there are an infinite amount of smaller Non-profits that do a great job with social media.
For example: http://www.pacificaviationmuseum.org Twitter: @PacificAviation is a nonprofit aviation museum located in Pearl Harbor that keeps the memories of our WWII service men and women alive. They have a great twitter feed in the community and nationally, Facebook, Flickr, & YouTube.
Thank you for your blog post. We have some great nonprofit marketers listed here.
candrews1982 - November 2, 2010 at 1:26 pm
I think the Empowering Spirits Foundation should be added. The President is associated with Echoing Green, one of the nonprofits listed above. They are fairly new, but are making immense change through their service events and are growing rapidly. I saw in the San Diego news that they’ve grown to 40,000 members in just one year and have held over 100 events across the nation….pretty impressive. Their twitter page is @ESFtweet.
peteaidg - November 2, 2010 at 8:57 pm
I love groups like @echoinggreen (absolutely the best social enterprise supporting charity out there gave @aidg our start) I’d have to say this list is heavily a product of TWITTER’s “suggested user list” @echoinggreen’s jump from a few thousand followers to 70,000 happened almost overnight. This list is the key for the small social enterprise trying to get out there.
shenterprises - November 3, 2010 at 11:39 am
Curious as to why you defined “biggest influencers” as ones with most followers? I’d imagine that not all twitter followers are equal? It would be interesting to see Top 20 Tweeters in terms of Return on Follower (ROF). We’re trying to track it at @SHEnterprises.
chrisharrington - November 3, 2010 at 4:50 pm
Twitter Suggested User list along with those who follow thousands in hopes of gaining thousands of followers have devalued the follower count. I was once listed on the Suggested User list and I can attest, follower count is not a measure of influence.
Thank you for putting this list together. It’s still an honor for any organization to be positively blogged about and I’m sure they were all happy to see the post. Thanks.
@chrisharrington