Most corporate media platforms have a level of moral conflict for nonprofit organizations. The slope has been getting increasingly slippery, and it is time for a charitable reckoning on the use of platforms and the complicity of organizations (like this one) that use them.
The early days of social media (yes, some of us remember MySpace as the dominant player) saw a rush to a free service that would let nonprofits broadcast our messages to any and all. We helped convince our supporters to “follow us on Facebook!” – which meant we asked them to go to Facebook. In exchange for this free advertising for social media, we got free common space to talk to supporters and try to gain new ones. At first, we were even allowed to be shown in the feeds of people following us – an increasingly rare thing for the non-boosted post in such places.
Visibility and virality aside, the recent changes at Twitter have forced a conversation forward that perhaps started with Cambridge Analytica in 2018: At what point does a social good organization decide that the use of a platform constitutes an endorsement of the harms they create? This line will move for any charity based on its mission, values, and externalities like partnerships. No group can answer this question on behalf of another, but it is certainly time each charity made that decision about Twitter.
Next in Nonprofits has its largest social media following on Twitter – but it is not the most engaged audience. (Depending on how one measures engagement, that would be either LinkedIn or Mastodon). That group took nine years to build, and won’t be replicated elsewhere very soon. The question is not about how many followers, but the value that platform or history provides to you and your community. Dr. Jonathan Flowers had a podcast conversation on the Sunday Show – The Whiteness of Mastodon – which gives pause to the idea that everyone should just abandon Twitter communities and try to reform them elsewhere. This conversation should not be missed.
The Next in Nonprofits team will make a longer-term decision on using Twitter, but will also need to monitor the problems with Facebook, Instagram, et. al. The Twitter account will be paused for the foreseeable future, and this post will be updated when we have a final decision. There is value in sharing the process in the open. Reverting to the web and sharing the link across all open channels (see our old but still relevant post on this) may help more groups learn.