US Charities' Adoption of Social Media Outpaces All Other Sectors for the Third Year in a Row

Conducted by: Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D. (nbarnes@umassd.edu)
Eric Mattson (eric@ericmattson.com)

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research recently completed its third statistically significant study on the usage of social media by United States charities.

In 2007, the first study of this group's use of social media was released. It revealed that these large non-profits were leading large and small businesses as well as universities (see our previous research) in their familiarity with, usage of, monitoring of and attitude towards social media. One year later, in 2008, the second study showed that lead in knowledge, adoption and positive attitude was still there.

This new research shows that charitable organizations are still outpacing the business world and academia in their use of social media. The latest study (2009) revealed that a remarkable ninety-seven percent of charitable organizations are using some form of social media including blogs, podcasts, message boards, social networking, video blogging, wikis and Twitter.

The analysis is based on detailed interviews with executives of the 76 charities that responded. Those that participated are diverse in mission, average gifts, and total revenue. They include some of the best-known charities in the country such as the Salvation Army, American Heart Association, Catholic Relief Services, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and American Lung Association. On the last Forbes list, the number 1 charity listed, Lutheran Services in America is included in the study. The participating non-profits are geographically diverse with headquarters in most major US cities including New York, Washington DC, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta and San Francisco.

Downloads

• US Charities’ Adoption of Social Media Study (PDF)
• US Charities’ Adoption of Social Media Study (DOC)