51% of Donors 'Not At All Interested' in Social Networks
Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 02:24PM | by Caitlin Ochs A recent survey by Harris Interactive and Virilion unearthed some surprising results about donor preferences for receiving information.
A majority of donors, 51%, were, "not at all interested" following organizations that they care about through blogs, social networks, and RSS. In fact, only 6% of donors reported using social media to track organizations.
Presenting nonprofits with somewhat of a paradox is the fact that 52% of respondents think its important that nonprofits use social media to connect with supporters.
When asked what types of information they would prefer to receive through social media, "Donation/Information Requests" ranked last, preferred by only 22% of donors. The top three choices were News and Announcements, Success Stories, and Volunteer Opportunities.
The survey, taken during late December of 2007 and early January of 2008, included 2,275 adults who reported donating, volunteering, or advocating on behalf of a nonprofit in the 12 months prior to taking the survey.
Though these results are somewhat inconclusive, the survey highlights the importance of knowing what your donors want and keeping in touch with their preferences.
Click here to read the full results and details.
Thanks to The Chronicle of Philanthropy for their article that brought our attention to the survey!
Reader Comments (6)
A good reminder with how you ended the post: Knowing your audience is important. Reminds me of a post I saw earlier today...that stressed, "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should" when it comes to social media.
Thanks for sharing!
Very, very interesting data. Your community might like to compare these Harris results with results from our own nonprofit web 2.0 / SN survey, located here: http://plml.org/wiki/wikka.php?wakka=SurveyResults .
The motivation behind the survey was to explore reported benefits of technologies, rather than simply the possibilities. The findings suggest that the benefits are rather shallow, and that blogging, but not social networking, might be most useful to nonprofit outreach.
Of course, it all depends on the management of the program, the alignment of goals and outreach technology to the audience (as noted above!), etc.
--Dave
Of course, that doesn't mean social networking is a great place for fundraising. Social networking is still a very very small source of dollars and organizations should step into this in a thoughtful and deliberate way and not feel they have to be doing everything.
That is what happened with a recent press release of the “DonorPulse Survey” conducted by Harris Interactive and Virilion. Many in the blogosphere locked onto the first stat … that 51% of those surveyed stated they would not be be interested in keeping up with nonprofits or charitable organizations that they cared about through social media.
Yet the same group when asked the question: “How important would you say it is for nonprofit and charitable organizations to use social media to communicate with their supporters?” 52% said it was important for nonprofit and charitable organizations to use social media to communicate with their supporters. Higher level donors show greater interest in being kept informed through social media (51%) then mid and lower level donors (43%).
I appreciate our colleagues at CARE2 bringing this survey to the attention of its readers and would like to invite them to read more about the survey and how to sign up for our june 5th webinar by visiting http://www.suesmuse.com.