How big is your Facebook group?
Howard Lake | 28 February 2008 | Blogs
On the back page of Third Sector magazine this week, Matthew Little pointed out that Facebook is turning out to be “a very lonely frontier” for some organisations in the charity sector. He cites the example of the Directory of Social Change. Despite the fact that it runs 300 training courses for thousands of voluntary sector staff each year, its two Facebook groups ‘Grants not Contracts‘ and ‘Are small charities an endangered species?‘ have so far attracted just one member each (the same DSC staff member in fact).
Which suggests it’s time to have a quick look around to see just how many people some of the sector’s Facebook groups have actually attracted and/or retained, some nine months or so after Facebook exploded into many people’s awareness in the UK.
I’ve chosen some of the groups that I’m a member of, which include a few US groups, and the membership figures were accurate as of a few minutes ago. I have excluded charities’ Facebook groups: this is a list of suppliers, trade publications and other support elements of the voluntary sector. So the list is illustrative only, and not comprehensive.
1. Everyclick (674 members)
2. The Third Sector PR and Communications network (519 members)
3. do-it.org.uk: Volunteering made easy (438 members)
4. UK Fundraising (361 members)
5. Direct Dialogue Fundraising (320 members)
6. Fundraisers Network (192 members)
7. I worked for Dialogue Direct (186 members)
8. Convio [USA] (146 members)
9. acevo – third sector leaders (95 members)
10. VolResource (93 members)
11. Intelligent Giving (86 members)
12. Professional Fundraising magazine (79 members)
13. The
Chronicle of Philanthropy [USA] (68 members)
14. Justgiving (58 members)
15. Fundraising Training – The Bill Bruty Fan Club (41 members)
16. Institute of Fundraising South East Group (33 members)
17. (22 members)
18. Institute of Fundraising Technology Group (17 members)
19. Irish Charity Challenge Events (13 members)
20. Fundraisising Ireland (7 members)
21. Fundraising Italia (6 members)
22. Grants not Contracts [Directory of Social Change] (1 member)
23. Are small charities an endangered species? [Directory of Social Change] (1 member)
Not all the above groups were set up as officially representative and some have been running for longer than others, so the above list doesn’t compare like with like. (The IoF Corporate Fundraisers group was set up earlier today). Nevertheless, overall it is clear that sector suppliers, advisers and umbrella groups are not attracting or retaining large numbers of members on Facebook. And that includes UK Fundraising of course.
Have the groups not yet grasped how to use Facebook effectively? Can it be used effectively by nonprofit umbrella groups, agencies, suppliers and trade publications? I still think it can, but the numbers above suggest otherwise.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.