Of all the types of organizations, member-driven associations and charitable organizations can benefit the most from social media. Social media offers great vehicles for communicating with members and potential members; those you seek to serve and potential donors. While associations and charities provide value in representing members or seeking to serve certain populations as unified voices, they also must communicate with those it serves and, in many cases, contributors.
As I did in November for B2B manufacturing, I’m offering some brainstorming ideas of how locally-focused, non-profit charitable 
organizations can use and benefit from social media. And, of course, any feedback and definitely other ideas are welcomed and appreciated.
Blog: A charitable organization’s main audiences are the people it serves/helps and those who contribute in-kind or financially for the association’s cause. So, the charity should only blog if either audience is significantly online. Once you determine if a key population of your audience is online, why and how blog?
A blog is an effective way to communicate to the public at large. You can communicate with your connections and those who you hope to connect with. This can be done through communicating:
- Events — to raise money and to help those you serve. Also can include reports/after-event coverage of pictures and recaps.
- Testimonials and examples of those you help — to humanize the people you serve, show the real need you are meeting.
- Special pleas — for fund-raising events or campaigns, and for special needs to help those you serve. A blog is a great platform to state your case and interact with audience members and other key populations when they comment.
- Resources that also can help those you serve — this information would mostly be sidebars, not posts, but still great information to show how you are helping and striving to achieve your mission.
- Use it as your newsroom by using posts for your news releases, with links to images either on your site or hosted on places like Flickr.
- Highlight volunteers who are integral in the services you provide.
Facebook/Ning: While a blog is to everyone, you can take advantage of the functionality of networking sites like Facebook or Ning to communicate with your connections (again, those involved in funding and those you help). You can customize the privacy settings for those sites, communicate with members via email, post images, have discussions, etc. These types of social networking sites allow for direct communication — kind of like an opt-in email distribution list, but only much more functional and flexible to communicate with people you are connected with.
Education/Training: If part of your service is in educating or training — and, again, if the population you serve is often online — there are many technologies you can use to expand your service. Of course, sometimes you may want to incorporate these into your blog or group, if pertinent. I’m talking about technologies like SlideShare and Citrix’s GoTo Meeting.
As part of the above, you can take advantage of other social media technologies, like Flickr, YouTube and related image- and video-sharing sites to tell visuals stories about your organization. You also should incorporate RSS feeds, and see if you can incorporate user-generated content by bringing images, video, posts, etc., with tags related to your cause or organization. As a great example, see what R.E.M. did for its 2008 tour. (This last item depends on what type of organization you are, your reach, etc.)
-Mike
Image of Charity & Mercy by Brother Lawrence Lew, O.P.
