I had the opportunity to discuss social-media strategies this morning with nonprofit executives attending Catholic Charities USA’s Centennial Gathering in Washington.
On a national scale, Catholic Charities is huge—it ranked No. 13 on The Chronicle‘s most recent Philanthropy 400 survey, which lists the nation’s largest charities based on their fund-raising totals. But Catholic Charities is made up of thousands of small, local organizations that are often stretched to their limits in terms of budget and manpower.
Most of the people in the room for today’s discussion manage local organizations that fit that description—and they are struggling to find the time to build effective social-media networks while delivering services to their clients, raising money, and managing their offices.
At one point during the conversation, the question arose of who should manage the Facebook pages and Twitter accounts at smaller organizations. For some, it’s a volunteer. For others, it’s an intern. For still others, it’s the executive director.
But the conference goers wanted to open the question to the entire nonprofit world.
So who manages your organization’s Facebook page? Please share your group’s answer in the comments section below—and be sure to provide details about how much time that person spends and what you’ve been able to accomplish.
We hope the conversation will provide some great real-world examples of how small nonprofit groups are managing their social-media efforts.
10 Responses to Who Manages Your Group’s Facebook Page?
nancyw0517 - September 27, 2010 at 4:48 pm
Hello Peter – excited to see what people post and how they respond. Our company http://www.giftoftravel.com fits the bill of being small and looking for ways to effectively not just manage, but really benefit from social media. It’s a constant challenge and I feel like we’re recreating the wheel / looking for the perfect recipe every day! Nancy Williams, Managing Director Gift of Travel / Travel as a Fundraiser
cattiva - September 27, 2010 at 5:24 pm
I manage our site. I am the Director of Development, but also of all things electronic involving communication (twitter, social networking, blog, web site, e-newsletters, etc…) this helps with integration and keeping the message through multi channels consistent and on target.http://www.facebook.com/holyfamilysisters
markandphil - September 27, 2010 at 11:44 pm
We’re noticing more and more that many smaller non-profits simply just don’t have the time to keep up with the conversations and tools that need to be handled each day, let alone actually develop and deploy a social media marketing campaign. Our role at Mark & Phil (http://markandphil.com) is to help our clients do this. We handle the social media updates for three different non-profits (two local and one national) as well as the overall online marketing strategy. The best way a small NPO could handle social media would be having a dedicated person or consultant handling the major social media updates while also allowing the appropriate staff to set new updates as they see fit. The process often looks like this:1) Develop the social media strategy and tone for the month. Define the specific objectives and how success will be measured. Go over with NPO marketing stakeholders.2) Deploy scheduled status updates and blog posts at the beginning of the month. Frequency is usually 4 – 8 twitter posts a day, 1 – 3 facebook posts a day, 1 – 3 blog posts a week. http://hootsuite.com does all of this beautifully.3) Staff at the NPO send twitter and facebook updates at their convenience. This creates a nice mix of scheduled posts and relevant posts as well.4) Deploy offline media to back up online campaigns such as press releases, direct mail, etc.So there ya have it, the secrets are out of the bag! ;) Of course we have some special sauce like using good design, following the KISS methodology, and working closely to really write in the tone of the NPO’s we work with so it is believable and as genuine as possible. But really, the reason clients come to us for help is because they don’t have the time to handle it themselves.
bjordan - September 28, 2010 at 1:59 pm
At Highland Street Foundation – a family foundation based in Newton, MA – the community relations manager is the primary Facebook manager, but it’s also a group effort. Most of the staff are categorized as administrators to allow each person to post photos and information about various programs and initiatives. The HSF Facebook page grew from 20 to 1,522 fans over this past summer thanks to an agressive outreach campaign surrounding its Free Fun Fridays program, which provides free admission to Massachusetts-based museums and cultural attractions. While the Free Fun Fridays program has ended for this calendar year, HSF continues to try to engage its Facebook audience of families, non-profits and other foundations with information about upcoming events, programs and contests.
leapingstone - September 28, 2010 at 2:04 pm
LeapingStone is a small nonprofit whose goal is to send 90% of what we raise to the project; therefore, we rely on volunteers to help with our socail media updates. Of course, that also means that I (the President) also do updates to FaceBook, Twitter, and the blog on our site. http://www.leapingstone.org Would love to be able to afford help, but ……
tinamajors - September 28, 2010 at 2:59 pm
BrightStone is a nonprofit organization located in Franklin, TN that serves 32 adults with developmental disabilities. Most of our staff are direct services related. I (Director of Fund Development) manage our Facebook page, website, Twitter account and blogsite. We recently added an Administrative Assistant who is now helping with blogsite and Facebook postings, as well as our E-newsletters.
jdejesus - September 28, 2010 at 9:30 pm
Our Director of Community Strategies is the primary point person for our Facebook page. However, different members of our staff also have admin privileges to post campaign-specific updates. Our twitter feeds are linked to our FB statuses as well.
kbriscoe - September 29, 2010 at 9:41 am
At Catholic Charities USA we have 2 staff who maintain our official Facebook and Twitter sites. We try to post a few times a week. Having 2 people update the sites is helpful so it doesn’t fall on one person’s shoulders and it helps create a mix of information from different departments. We also use ping.fm to streamline posting. We’re definitely still getting used to the tools but have seen positive results – reaching out to new people, receiving real-time updates from other organizations, and strengthening relationships with partners and supporters.
bbloomfield - September 29, 2010 at 10:52 am
The Alabama Wildlife Center launched a Facebook page in April. The Executive Director manages the site, with contributions of photos, video and text from several different staff and volunteers. We try to post new content at least 5 times a week. When there is big news, such as the Gulf Coast oil spill, we were trying to post even more frequently. We try to space out our calls for action and try not to make asks more than once a week, and we try vary between asking for dollars, asking for volunteers, asking for in-kind donation, asking for help to spread the word, etc. We’ve definitely seen positive results – new donors, new volunteers, and many folks reporting that they feel more engaged in the work of the organization.
lindagarrison - September 29, 2010 at 3:10 pm
We have a social media professional who deals with our FB, Twitter, Flickr and etc. pages, as well as LinkedIn, blogs and more. She works across the entire Institutional Advancement department. She’s been especially amazing doing live feeds from events such as grand openings of buildings, major art installation premieres and the like.