THE RAISE OF USING SOCIAL MEDIA IN NON PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
SUMMARY:
This paper will address my observations about the roles of social media, how it affects non profit organizations in term of marketing and fundraising from both negative and positive side
BACKGROUND
Social media is defined as “group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user generated content” Kaplan, Andreas M.; Michael Haenlein (2010). Bringing organizations the ability to interact with the society, social media has been revolutionizing the way organizations doing marketing.
It is obvious that every organization has a great need in in marketing itself, interacting and communicating with its members and society to keep them informed and engaged. For special organizations like non-profit ones, the need of effective communication channels at zero cost is likely greater, especially during challenging economic time today. And social media, currently, is likely the best choices for such organizations.
EARTH HOUR-A SUCCESSFUL CASE OF USING SOCIAL MEDIA FOR REACHING AND ENGAGING TARGET AUDIENCES
According to Facebook early October 2012, Facebook now has more than one billion users each month and its one billion users have been responsible for 1.13 trillion “likes,” 219 billion photos and 17-billion location check-in. Being one of the “top of mind” social net work, Facebook is used by most of non profit organizations to communicate and interact with their community.
Let’s take “Earth hour” as an example; it started in 2007 in a small city in Australia, Earth Hour aimed to create among Australians on the issue of climate change. Thanks for social media; Earth hour is now the biggest ever-public awareness campaign about environment. More over, Earth hour now is not only about “no electric for 1 hour” every year, it is about everything which helps to protect the nature. As co-Founder and Executive Director, Andy Ridley said “In Brazil, its used for the Amazon's conservation, in China it's about cleaner air and in India is about energy saving”. Obviously, only social media, which enables everybody to be ”citizen journalism”, plays a big role in both globalizing and localizing the campaign.
After 8 years since established, Earth hour is now in 128 countries all over the world. Its official page on Facebook has 763,764,000,000 “like” until October 2012. There are around 60 Earth hour fan pages in Vietnamese, Chinese, German and French etc. Billion people on social media join Earth hour and show their willingness to be a part of the solution.
What leads Earth hour to such success? The answer is “Social media is not just connecting the world but is becoming the primary organizing tool for citizens to take action. People from over 150 countries across the globe are harnessing the power of online platforms to physically care for the future of the planet,” said Andy Ridley .
BREAST CANCER AWARENESS CAMPAIGN GETS SOCIAL

Early 2010, I and got a message in my inbox “Write the color of your bra as your status -- just the color, nothing else” from a friend of mine. I can’t remember what color I chose then, but at that time, there were so many “color” statuses on Facebook. To us, it was a fun game; we couldn’t imagine that this “trend”, later on, made big headlines not only in asia country but also on Time, Washington post, CNN, BBC etc and.. No one knew who was the one who created this viral, but spokeswoman for Facebook, at that time said “this is an example of a grass-roots movement beginning on the social networking site.” (Sarah Aarthun, 2010).

This “social media” root campaign not only helped to make big headline on leading newspapers and magazines, but also created “talk in town” or “work of mouth” about the campaign. In general, it helped spread the word and drew public attention powerfully to breast cancer.

SOCIAL MEDIA CAN CAUSE CRISIS-THE SUSAN G KOMEN CASE.

I am rephrasing the situation of how social media makes it harder for a organization to manage its reputation as reported by New York Times, Huffington post, Washington Post etc. below: Earlier summer 2012,the Susan G. Komen foundation for the cure (a organization which aims to fight against breast cancer)decided to stopped supporting Planned parenthood. It means Planned Parenthood will no longer receive roughly $680,000 annually to fund breast cancer exams. According to Komen, the fund was cut because it adopted new guidelines that prevent it from funding organizations under congressional investigation. This decision of Komen received massive backlashes starting on social media; Planned Parenthood’s supporters jumped onto social media, calling out Komen and demanding they support PP again. They also made it clear that they would never donate to Komen breast cancer fund anymore. The more Komen reacted and explained, the angrier the crowd was. This “online war” made big headline on leading magazines of the nation. Finally, Komen caved to the pressure, and they announced they would continue to support Planned Parenthood. Meanwhile, according to Laura Basset(2012), Planned Parenthood announced that it received $400,000 USD from about 6,000 donors across the country in within a day since Komen made fund cutting decision.

SOCIAL MEDIA, A NEW CHANNEL FOR FUNDRAISING.

From what I observe, most of non-profit organizations rather use social media as a tool to engage donors, create awareness and draw public attention than make transactions. But in some special cases, as long as there is a touching stories, social media will be a powerful source for fundraising. Planned Parenthood is a good example for what I mentioned. According to Planned Parenthood website, the organization received more than 3 million USD from thousands of people across the country in only three days after Komen made it public that they would stop funding.
Another case I am rephrasing is Free the children, reported by Sarah Kessler on Mashable.com. Free the children is an organization that aims to empower youths to remove barriers that prevent them from being active local and global citizens, hosted an annual event called We Day. We day helped to bring youths in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal for a day of motivational speeches and performances. The event’s sponsors such as The Keg Spirit Foundation, CTV, and Me to We made a agreement that they would to donate $1 for every “Like” that the We Day Facebook Page received. By using famous people such as The Jonas Brothers, Al Gore, Jason Mraz and Ellen DeGeneres to help for spreading the campaign through their Twitter and Facebook accounts. After about three months, Free the Children is halfway to the $1 million goal that the sponsors agreed to.
Likewise, Eden Nelson, a blogger did a great job in fundraising. According to Mashable, Eden Nelson raised more than 135,00 USD in lest than 10 days using his blog, his accounts on Twitter and Friends asking Friends. What happened was Nelson wrote an entry on his blog in the form of job applying cover letter(this entry attracted 134 comments) to Johan Bruyneel, the team manager of Lance’s Armstrong. Nelson wanted switch his career into a professional cyclist at his mid-age. With the powerful help of social media, this entry did reach out to the team manager and he challenged Nelson to raise 50,000USD to Livestrong and World Bicycle Relief. They both tweeted numerous times and the stories of this challenges was spread widely on Twitter by followers and Nelson collected 50,000 USD just within two day. Needless to say, without the help of social media, Nelson could hardy complete his quest in in this fundraising challenge.
CONCLUSION
In my opinion, social media has become a important part of any marketing campaign of non-profit organizations. Social media helps organizations to engage, interact with its donors and draw public attention to its’ activities in a very positive way. Marketers, special marketers in non-profit organization tend to prefer social media over traditional way. There are some reasons, first, because people are less likely to get information through traditional channels such as TV, magazines, mails etc. Second, social media offers “two way” communication, which can help people feel more engaged with organizations/events. Third, social media campaign could create a great impact at a very low cost. However, social media can cause a swift crisis for organizations which lack of social media strategy
But in term of fundraising, traditional donation methods are still the most vital ones because, in my opinion, the popularity of social media in fundraising is still relatively new and growing.

REFERENCES

Kaplan, Andreas M.; Michael Haenlein (2010) "Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media". Business Horizons 53(1): 59–68.

http://philanthropy.com/blogs/social-philanthropy/how-young-people-learn-about-nonprofits-online/30979

Revealing Facebook posts promote cancer awareness http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/01/08/facebook.bra.color/

http://adage.com/article/goodworks/marketing-earth-hour-s-online-revolution/143369/

http://mashable.com/2010/09/23/small-non-profits-social-media/

http://articles.cnn.com/2012-04-24/worldsport/sport_athletics-london-marathon-dead-runner_1_donations-surge-social-media-samaritans?_s=PM:WORLDSPORT

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/01/susan-g-komen_n_1247262.html
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SOCIAL MEDIA& ITS ROLES IN NON PROFIT ORGANIZATION
Course : GSM561
Pages : 5
Word count : 1450
Name : Quyen Le