The Impact of the Web and Social Media on the Performance of Nonprofit Organizations

摘要

This research empirically analyzes the impact of both the Web and social media on the performance of nonprofit organizations by using 100 nonprofit organizations ranked by web traction measures, including Facebook Likes and Twitter Followers. Our findings from ANOVA and non-parametric tests demonstrate that nonprofit organizations with higher web traction have greater contributions and grants than others with lower web traction. These findings suggest that the use of the Web coupled with social media promotes better, interactive (two-way) communications with the public, as well as fundraising and that nonprofit organizations that attract more supporters on the Web and social media can increase charitable giving. Our regression analyses based on the economic model of giving that estimates the direct relationship between web traction and donations show similar results. However, the results also show that the impact of economic factors such as price and fundraising activities on charitable giving is much greater than the impact of web traction.