Building a Social Networking Site is Not an Outreach Strategy

I was down in New York City last weekend for Craigslist’s Nonprofit Boot Camp. It was a great event – I really enjoyed seeing old friends again, and meeting a ton of new people.

As the conference is geared towards young and startup nonprofits, there event was filled with ambitious folks with ideas for new nonprofits. The energy and passion was amazing, but I was a bit alarmed by a new trend I haven’t seen before: easily half the people who talked to me about their startup idea were focused on building a new social networking website.

There are a number of things wrong with that model. First, social networking sites can be useful, but they don’t replace the need to build the actual social network. The “if you build it, they will come” strategy is even less likely to work in this realm than in all the other realms in which it also doesn’t work. Second, consider whether your constituents really want to join another social networking site. My suspicion is that most constituents you might serve would find as much value in a happy hour, a discussion list, a Twitter network, whatever, as opposed to yet another social networking site. Third, why not use the social networking tools that exist? There’s already too many of them, and they already have visitors – build on what’s there to create your own sub-community.

My advice, for what it’s worth? Start with the network. Create a happy hour, a discussion list, a pen-pal community, anything. Use simple technology that won’t present barriers to entry for your constituents and will cost you virtually nothing. Once your community is so large and vibrant and overflowing with stuff that it can’t be contained in the structure you’ve established, then it’s time to start looking to more advanced ways to serve it, like through a social networking site.