These days, online communities aren’t just for businesses; they’ve become a significant part of the not-for-profit sector as well. Organizations with forward-thinking directors and staff realize that their future success depends on being able to leverage social media tools and resources. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Connected Communities are all designed to make their organization’s website a regular online destination for donors, members, event sponsors, and volunteers of all ages. Online communities provide an invaluable service to not-for-profits by allowing like-minded members to share information and new ideas and to work together to further the organization’s vision and goals, sometimes without ever leaving their home or office.

There are advantages and disadvantages to the two most common ways of establishing a strong online community presence.

Use a private online community software provider: These companies provide or design custom social community software products that are specific to your organization’s needs and help you meet your goals in a timely, efficient manner. Most companies are staffed by highly skilled and experienced consultants that are able to find innovative solutions to technology challenges and recommend new ideas for the constantly changing, rapidly expanding field of social media.

Advantages

• You don’t have to waste valuable time trying to figure out which tools would best serve you and your members. Experts will do all the work for you, seamlessly integrating social media into your organization’s yearly publicity plan. When you aren’t sure what you’re doing, outsourcing to a professional is often the most cost-effective course to choose and having a “middleman” to rely on takes much of the stress out of maximizing the benefits of social media.
• These programs allow you more opportunities to influence your clients’ level of engagement on your website through carefully selected advertisements, incentives, and rewards. They can also provide an additional sponsorship revenue stream for your organization.
• Many online community software packages offer integration and data management systems to their clients, so these tools can be pre-populated with information from your existing member database and integrated with your web presence.

Disadvantages

• Many of your members are already using existing public social media tools so they’ll need to be convinced of the value of logging onto an additional private social community.
• Social media programs can be costly and sometimes it’s difficult to convince organizations to include social media services as a regular budget item.

Leverage existing public social media tools: Many individuals and not-for-profits are already comfortably using social media in both their personal lives and careers. If building and maintaining online communities while staying abreast of new developments in the field comes easily to you, then this option may be preferable.

Advantages

• The most obvious benefit of using public social network tools is that they can be used by anyone, anytime. They’re easily accessed and allow you to connect with others independently, without the oversight of a company.
• Most public social media tools have both an extensive radius and high name recognition worldwide.
• If you choose to design your own social media marketing plan you’ll always know exactly how and why each of your social media tools works (or doesn’t) for your organization.
• Many of your members are already using public social media tools, so they won’t need to login to a separate account to access your organization’s community.
• They’re free! You can avoid the sometimes costly installation and maintenance fees of private social media software.

Disadvantages

• There’s no way to control advertisements. This can result in “pop ups” that are distracting to members and visitors and which may cause them to stray from your site. This may ultimately result in less-effective organizational branding.
• Tools may not function reliably and special features may randomly appear and disappear.
• Public social media services don’t offer data extraction or integration tools.
• Although the public social media tools are free, there is still a lot of staff time involved in managing your groups and your overall social media presence.

Once you’ve reviewed the pros and cons of each method, considering what might work best for your not-for-profit, keep in mind that it doesn’t have to be an “either/or” choice. You also have the option of picking and choosing a combination of social media strategies from both the private and public offerings. There are no right or wrong decisions since the primary goal of utilizing social media tools is to offer your organization’s members and potential members value-based programs and new ways to bond and communicate with others, resulting in increased trust, loyalty, and revenues for your organization.

Singlebrook Technology can help guide you through your social media options and find the solution that fits your organization. Contact us if you want to discuss your options, integrate some public social media tools with your web presence or view a demo of some popular private social media software.