Winter 2016 – Digital Issue

Social Media: The New Nonprofit Nonelective

Features

• Welcome
  
  
• Social Media as an Organizational Game Changer
  This article explores the connections between social media and the deep changes that are taking place in the relationship between our organizations and our constituencies. Social media’s “naturally reciprocal and boundarycrossing character is at the very center of its transformative potential,” McCambridge writes—but for many, the habits of vertical leadership and gatekeeping are hard to break. by Ruth McCambridge
  
  
• Social Media Capital for Nonprofits: How to Accumulate It, Convert It, and Spend It
  It is a rare nonprofit that today does not have a Facebook page or Twitter account. But as more and more nonprofits are rushing into the fray, their leaders often overlook one basic question: “What’s in it for me?” A crucial benefit, write the authors, is a new, highly valuable resource engendered by social media: social media capital. by Chao Guo and Gregory D. Saxton
  
  
• Step 1 for Effective Advocacy in the Age of Trump: Learn to Listen Better
  Nonprofits are increasingly incorporating digital listening into their practice, using the same tools and techniques of journalism, governments, and corporations to develop new advocacy techniques. But, as David Karpf, author of The MoveOn Effect, points out, there is a vast difference between listening more through digital media and listening better. by David Karpf
  
  
• Defending Underage Migrants across Free Online Spaces: Behind the Scenes of a “Non-Organization”
  This article, about the formation of an extraordinarily effective civil society “non-organization” in France, is a fascinating portrait of a social movement that operates as an everexpanding mass of local cells, whose members communicate and coordinate via an elaborate network of e-mail lists and periodic face-to-face meetings. by Philippe Eynaud, Damien Mourey, and Nathalie Raulet-Croset

Departments

• Collaborating for Equity and Justice: Moving Beyond Collective Impact
  In the face of the ever-increasing need to solve the wicked problems of inequity and injustice in the United States, the authors developed a set of six principles, drawn from decades of research, organizing, and experience in a wide range of fields, to replace the problematic top-down Collective Impact model that, since its introduction, has become the go-to for organizations involved in collaborative efforts. by Tom Wolff, Meredith Minkler, Susan M. Wolfe, Bill Berkowitz, Linda Bowen, Frances Dunn Butterfoss, Brian D. Christens, Vincent T. Francisco, Arthur T. Himmelman, and Kien S. Lee
  
  
• The Philanthropic State: Market–State Hybrids in the Philanthrocapitalist Turn
  This article challenges the assumption that philanthrocapitalism operates in a vacuum largely divorced from governmental interventions, and explores how new philanthropic initiatives have compelled increased financial support from governments toward the private sector. by Linsey McGoey
  
  
• The Overhead Baby and the Bathwater: A Nonprofit Trustees’ Need-to-Know
  The authors take the position that an organization’s overall understanding of its financial status must include a clear sense of its overhead, and they highlight some important patterns that emerged from their recent analysis of over ten thousand New York organizations. by John MacIntosh and George Morris