The results of the survey are a vital tool for organisations wishing to understand how well the third sector uses social media and digital communications. Additionally not for profits can use the insight for a variety of purposes including creating a business case and understanding best practice.
Interim results
The full survey will close in July. If you are yet to complete it please do so and help us create the most accurate picture of the sector yet. By completing the survey, charities will be entered into a draw to win a free website review from GOSS Interactive in addition to receiving a free copy of the full report when it is published.
Enter here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/nfpsm
The results of those surveyed so far show that 92% have a website and 83% are using digital technology and social media in their communication strategy. This shows that digital is seen as an important channel to deliver services, collect donations and engage supporters.
Social media
The majority of organisations were using social media in some way. Facebook was used by 90% of organisations, Twitter was used by 85% and YouTube by 64%. These tools are being used to raise awareness of the organisation and to form a community, gather knowledge, information and feedback. Common barriers were time, training and knowing which sites to use.
However, only 50% monitor the effectiveness of their social media activity.
Whilst monitoring social media engagement can be difficult, by not doing so it is impossible for an organisation to understand if it is meeting its objectives.
Social media can be used for a wide variety of tactical marketing, rather than part of the overall marketing strategy. One large area where social media can really create efficiencies is being missed, namely as an online learning and professional development tool. Social media is used by less than 20% of organisations for learning and professional development.
Social media was used across all teams / departments where the organisation was large enough to be structured this way. Of the people who answered this question, 83% had marketing departments who used social media, 56% public relations, 50% fundraising and 46% internal communications.
Creating efficiencies - do it online
Delivering services and collecting donations online is the most efficient way of engaging with service users and supporters. In fact, other surveys (SOCITM channel benchmarking) have indicated that channel costs are:
- £8.23 Face-to-face
- £3.21 Telephone
- £0.39 Website
For service provision, beatbullying published at the Third Sector Digital Communication and Social Media convention the costs for 1-2-1 interventions:
- £600 Face-to-face
- £250 Telephone
- £60 Online
Interim results from the Aspire Knowledge/GOSS Interactive survey indicate understanding that "do it online" is efficient, but little progress is being made putting this into practice.
36% of those who responded said that their biggest challenge to online fundraising is budget.
57% said that they were under pressure to reduce costs.
72% believe delivering services online is efficient.
Yet 50% said that they are collecting less than 5% of their donations online.
If you are going to change one thing with your digital communications, enable "do it online".
Even more in the full report
The above is just a taster of the information that will be available in the full report.
Additionally the report will include:
- The digital communications challenges charities are focusing on surpassing in the near future
- Attitudes and uses of social media
- The roles of CEO and trustees in digital communications and social media
- Average budgets for websites
- Budget trends (up or down)
- The use of specialist agencies
- The role of specialist agencies
- The use of web analytics
Don't forget to submit your survey and enter the fabulous competition to win a website review from digital engagement specialists GOSS Interactive: Enter here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/nfpsm
Posted by Pete Stevens, 23rd June 2011
