Wednesday 4 September 2013

Social Media Best Practices for Non-Profit Organizations


As I mentioned in the previous post about the benefits of implementing social media tools to assist organizations reach more people in more efficient and effective ways, some organizations have had great success in implementing Enterprise 2.0 while others, unluckily, have not seen the success they dreamed about.

Today, I would like to discuss the benefits of implementing Enterprise 2.0 for a non-profit organization. Firstly, few of the biggest value levers benefiting non-profits today will be presented, including fundraising, creating and expanding volunteer networks, and how they retain support to give an organization insight into quality touch-points from organization to user.

Kiva is a non-profit organization that aims to “connect people through lending to alleviate poverty”. It allows people leveraging the internet to lend money to people in developing countries. Kiva lets individuals lend as little as $25 to help create an opportunity around the world. Anyone can reach Kiva through Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or simply visit their official website to initiate a lend. Additionally, they established a YouTube channel to show the real stories and encourage people to loan others.
Mobilize Resources
As stated in The Social economy..., McKinsey Global Institute, 2012, social technology is an ideal way to find and keep donors to target the people willing to help the organization in achieving their mission.

Fundraise
Leveraging social media in non-profit organization increases fundraising totals by up to 40% making Twitter and Facebook an ideal solution for Kiva to start in the social media. They established a two-way communication by approaching stories in a personal and heart breaking way, and by doing so allow more people to engage in the community and lend to others as the least they can.

Create and expand volunteer network

Kiva was radically changed by social media when they ran the “invite challenge” campaign. They challenged their users to invite others to “try Kiva for free” through their different channels such as Facebook and Twitter. They offered Kiva t-shirts to those who successfully invited five or more friends. More interestingly, in less than 24 hours, more than 8000 people came to their website for the first time to offer loans to borrowers in need all over the world.

Retain support

Social networks help Kiva build awareness and growth in the organization through social media. Kiva, recently, launched KivaZip which creates a direct connection between lenders and borrowers. This transparency in the loan process eventually connects people all over the world with a goal to increase poor people opportunities to have a loan.

Overall, Kiva has successfully implemented Enterprise 2.0 tools to fundraise, expand their volunteer network and retain support.  +Kiva @kiva

What other ways can Kiva consider to achieve their mission and expand their volunteer community?

6 comments:

  1. I have to commend their innovating thinking of the invite users challenge. It's the perfect way on gathering supporters as it provides that taps into the competitive nature of users. Also, having mentioned that first-time users make donations, it just proves that visibility is a fundamental part of NFP success.

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    1. Yeah, and the good thing is that Kiva figured out that 70% of all lenders choose to make another loan when borrower returned the money to their account, which is amazing.

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  2. A very interesting organisation. It's good to see the relatively new "hand up" not "hand out" approaches to helping people.
    I particularly like the way they offered free shirts to people who invited 5 or more people to Facebook and Twitter. Building a following seems to always be the first step towards achieving benefits from social media and they did this very effectively.

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    1. They also crowd source the public to get new ideas or suggestion in how to achieve their mission and alleviate poverty in the whole world.

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  3. This is a very interesting and creative way of using social media Maram..so how does Kiva fund their website, do they take some sort of commission/interest from the loans?

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    1. They have funds from people donation as well as they have a lot of volunteers who works as Kiva partners.

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