How social media can strengthen donor relationships

Abstract

During a time when nonprofit leaders struggle to manage their donor base, there remain questions regarding the benefits of using social media to promote exchanges among donors and nonprofit organisations. The study described in this paper aimed to determine whether donors felt that using social media in their relationships with nonprofit organisations enhanced the relational attributes of trust, satisfaction, commitment and communal relationships. Social exchange and open systems theories formed the theoretical framework of the study. Using a social media addictive scale and a verified relationship scale, data were collected online from a randomly selected sample of 1,155 donors to a nonprofit organisation in the south-eastern USA. The researchers used multiple regressions and a multivariate analysis of variance to measure the connections among social media exchanges (predictor variables) and communal relationships, trust, commitment and satisfaction (criterion variables). The results reveal a significant contribution to the relational attributes of commitment and satisfaction, but marginal significance with communal relationships and trust. Nonprofit leaders can apply the findings by incorporating the interconnectivity of social media as a communication practice to foster donor relationships.