As an international student, I was impressed by how mature theories of nonprofit are in the US after reading the book Networked Nonprofits. While in China, the mass media even lacks the concern on nonprofits, here in the US, people are already talking about using social media.
When our group is discussing using social media for the new organization for migrant children in China, problems occur when we think about how to involve migrant parents using social media, while they do not know how to turn a computer on at all. The book Networked Nonprofits talked about using social media is not asking you to discard regular media completely, but combine social media with traditional ways to take the most advantage. Since most nonprofit organizations are helping vulnerable people who have to struggle to meet their basic needs, it seems unrealistic to involve the “targets” with social media.
So can we say social media is a useful means only among providers, but not beneficiaries in nonprofit sector?
Xiaofei,
ReplyDeleteI understand the challenges you are discussing. I think the ability of an organization to effectively use social media varies from one organization to another. It may be very difficult to attract “clients” to your organizations using social media, yet if Zhanna were to develop her organization in the Binghamton area she would likely find many of her participants through Facebook. This would also be the case for many cultural institutions, museums, libraries, etcetera. I was curious if you thought that using social media to develop your organization in China would be more difficult because of the limitation on internet usage there? (Ying had mentioned that twitter is blocked.) Or are there sufficient substitute/similar social media tools that it would not be a problem?
Hi Casondra,
ReplyDeleteThe problem is not about the block or limitation on internet, we have enough substitute social media tools. You might know that Chinese copy everything, so it seems like facebook, twitter and my space just have different names there.
Our problem is how to use social media among the target we are serving while most of them do not know how to use advanced tools such as laptops? For example, my organization is supposed to provide weekend educational activities for migrant worker’s children in China. So at the first stage, we should ask migrant workers’ permission to let their children participate. Since most migrant workers are less educated, very few knows how to use computers. So how do we use social media in this stage?
If we are running a business, let’s say a salon, it’s much easier to use social media since our customers are those who have extra money and use computers everyday. They can print coupons, make comments and give feedbacks. It’s a two-way interaction while using social media. But for nonprofit organizations, whose “customers” are mostly those who are still struggling with basic needs and are less educated, it is hard to communicate with them using social media because they might not know how to use computers at all. So can we say social media, as a tool, is less useful than that in business sectors?