The state of social media use in Australian non profit organisations

19 July 2012 | Of these, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) estimates that 59,000 are “economically significant” with a contribution of $43 billion to our GDP and filling 8% of employment. With a persistent perception that non profits are underfunded, under resourced and constantly walking the budget tightrope, new low cost technologies that enable communication of their message - such as social media - are an attractive alternative to expensive traditional marketing campaigns.

Take the example of “Charity Water”, a non profit organization in the United States (U.S.) that is estimated to have generated over $15 million in funding mainly through social media marketing, and has 228,000 FaceBook Likes and more than 1.3 million Twitter followers. Considering the fact that Charity Water has more followers on social media than many popular celebrities, it would seem to reinforce the idea that social media is a boon for non profit organizations. But is this realistic and achievable for the average Australian non profit using social media?

This report has analyzed 595 non profit organisations from a range of industries and aims to answer the following questions:

• Is social media use really prolific in the Australian non profit sector? 
• Which social media technologies have the strongest use? 
• Who are the top ranked non profit organizations using social media in Australia? 
• How do non profits typically use social media?