As an online communicator with clients both in the corporate and non-profit sector I was interested in a post recently by Jennifer McClure of The New Communications Review discussing how the social web is a great place for philanthropic activity.

Jennifer’s blogpost highlighted new research “…funded by the Columbus Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation and The Saint Paul Foundation demonstrating that High dollar donors — especially 30-49 year-olds — use the social web, but have yet to be engaged by strong, trustworthy philanthropic organizations. This was among the key findings of the new research study, “Community Philanthropy 2.0,” conducted by Beth Kanter, Society for New Communications Research Fellow Geoff Livingston, and Qui Diaz of CRT/tanaka.”

The Community Philanthropy 2.0 research study examined the use of social media by non-profits and causes, as well as existing donors and Internet “savvy” users’ traditional and social media usage patterns. The research was designed to determine if and how social media can be used to engage and cultivate high dollar donors.

Key Findings

* The online world of charitable activity is highly social, but also fragmented. No dominant voice for charitable giving exists online, indicating the social web is still in an early phase of philanthropic activity.
* Online conversations rarely evolve into meaningful discussions about how nonprofits are achieving their missions and impacting society. Donors don’t advise other donors, and generally, philanthropic experts from foundations do not participate in these discussions.
* There is a need for a trusted source, and a lack of authoritative philanthropic conversations.
* The 30-49 age group represents the best fit to cultivate major donors using social media strategies,
* More than 50 percent of 30 – 49-year-old survey respondents are interested in the following topics:
• “Whether or not a nonprofit is successfully making an impact” (75%)
• “Learning about organizations that are actively working on issues and causes I care about” (62%)
• “Success stories and updates on the progress of nonprofits I support” (54%)
• “Information/updates on the issues and causes I care about” (54%)
• “Financial accountability and governance of nonprofits I support” (51%)
* 80 percent of the Internet-savvy respondents aged 30-49 reported that they would participate in social media with nonprofits if the information was highly credible and of strong quality, and 77 percent said they would participate if it came from a trusted source.
* Online community-oriented social media is a preferred tool over most other forms of online conversation.

Source/Credit: New Communications Review

Many years ago I worked as an Information Manager at the NSW Cancer Council so with that background I was interested to see the use of innovative technology in this space with the introduction of the  Wellness Community.  While the community has been around for some years (Wash DC based) recently a swag of new functionality has been added to the site.

The Website provides free online support groups and education programs to people with cancer and their caregivers and families.

The community features new functionality including: chat support groups, Peer-to-peer social networking, Secure, thematic discussion forums,Personal blogs ,Video journals,Webcasts and podcasts and research tools to monitor symptoms and key quality of life indicators.

On a more local level the Cancer Council of NSW has its own version of the wellness community called Cancer Connections which is a very simple but well functioning site and looks relatively new.

Attending the Online Community Managers Roundtable last week was an eye-opener to the myriad of community types available but one area we didn’t discuss was Support Communities yet they have a very real and purposeful place today.