A free resource for nonprofit organizations, NGOs, civil society organizations,
charities, schools, public sector agencies & other mission-based agencies
by Jayne Cravens
via coyotecommunications.com & coyoteboard.com (same web site)

It can be difficult for people to understand the difference in email, in social media and in online communities, especially since email can be used to create an online community, or social media can be used to create an online community (Facebook Groups, for instance). And they all are people sending messages to people - so what, really, is the difference? 

This is my attempt to graphically show the difference, but I'll still have to use words to more fully explain what I mean.

Email		Email: One person sends a message to one person, or to more than one person. A recipient can respond to the one sender, to all the senders or to just some of the senders. No one can see the email that the email is not sent to. Meant primarily for one way, "top down" communications, or one-to-one communications. There's often a hope people will not react (to keep email numbers low). The "border" on exchanges is "solid." It's similar to a person making an announcement, or a key note speaker at a conference - one person speaks, others listen (read), there may not be any immediately avenue for discussion the announcement among those who have heard it (and there may not be a need for such). Can be used for an online community centered around one program, one event or one topic, with all users receiving emails from all users. Can generate dozens, even hundreds, of emails when used this way. There's usually no overall goal or strategy in one person sending an email to another person via email, in terms of increasing the number of people receiving the emails, but there might be a goal, in a mass email, of recipients clicking on a link and donating, or encouraging them to post something to their social media account with a particular hashtag, as part of an awareness campaign. In short: email is rarely used by nonprofits to "build community."
Social Media		Social Media: One person sends a message to everyone who "follows" that person or an organization on the social media platform. If the message is "public", other people could, potentially, see the message as well, if one of the followers forwards it or also shares it to their own followers, or if the message has a keyword that someone that is not a follower is searching for. One person may be making an announcement, but responses from those who hear it (read it) are expected and, perhaps, even encouraged. The "border" on the exchanges is porous - there's no solid wall preventing people from seeing exchanges (unless a person has made their account private). Exchanges can become a "community" via tags used for chatting on a specific topic - like #BlackTwitter, or #LOVols (leaders of volunteers) - with participants getting to know each other, helping each other, working together, sharing resources, etc. There is a goal, via the act of sending the message via social media, of increasing the number of people seeing the message and "liking" it. There may  also be a goal of building community among followers, where they regularly comment on posts and engage with each other in the comment section.
Online Community		Online Community: It's like a meeting room. If you aren't in the meeting room, you can't observe nor participate. And most people in the meeting room are there because there is a specific topic they want to talk about, learn about, discuss, etc. The community is focused on one topic or one audience: it's for people living in a specific neighborhood, or nonprofits to talk about the tech they use, or for volunteers at one specific library, or for people under 50 that are members of a particular religion, or fans of a specific band, and on and on. Members are encouraged to talk with each other - not just one person talking most of the time and hoping for others to react. There is a way to get into the community. The community could be via email (very cumbersome), a social media platform (Facebook group is most common), or a dedicated platform (Discourse, GoogleGroups, etc.). There is a goal of the members on the community working together and helping each other. There may not be a goal to grow the community - there may be a goal just to reach everyone in one community. Or, they may be a goal, through the messages, of increasing the size of the community, the understanding within the community, etc.  May be an activity the program director (the person working with clients) at a nonprofit is interested in more than the marketing director.

All three of these avenues for online communication can intersect:

• Your nonprofit's email newsletter or its social media account may talk about your online community for your volunteers.
   
• Your online community for your volunteers, your clients, your neighborhood, your partners, etc. may reference an email newsletter or something happening on your Facebook page.
   
• You may go onto an online community that is not under the control of your nonprofit to talk about your nonprofit, if it's on-topic for that community, to reach new audiences, potential new partners, create awareness, etc.

These online communications activities are divided these three areas with the consideration that communications activities by nonprofit organizations, cause-based initiatives, NGOs, etc., online or offline, have different goals:

• Some are to get people to attend an event, take a class, buy a book, donate, etc. Such communications are what I would call "pure" marketing.
   
• Some are to build awareness about an issue or an organization. The purpose of that awareness could be to eventually contribute to the aforementioned goal, it could be to address disinformation, it could be to get people to change their behavior (about recycling, about getting a vaccine, about car drivers sharing roads with bicyclists, etc.).
   
• Some are to build trust in an organization and its people, so that there is more receptiveness to all of its program and communications activities.
   
• Some are to create awareness that could lead to partnerships and collaborations.
  

All of these can be goals of these three areas of online communication - but some goals are better served by one online communications activity over another. And not note that all of these communications goals are the job of the marketing manager; some are the responsibility of the program director/client services manager, or your manager of volunteers. Just as your marketing manager doesn't run training sessions with your organization's volunteers that work with clients, they aren't going to manage your online community for volunteers, for instance.

What do you think?

How would you change the graphics or the explanation?

What would your graphic representation look like?

Tell me via Twitter or Facebook.

Also see:

• Launching & Maintaining a Successful Online Community for a Neighborhood, Town, City or County
  There are lots of resources for how to start and maintain an online community, but they are focused on online communities for customers of a company, or people all working in a particular career field (knowledge communities), or people all engaged in a similar activity, or people all suffering from the same condition (support communities). But the resources for helping people launch and maintain a successful online community for people living or working in neighborhood, town, city or county, a community that's meant to help neighbors get to know each other and to build offline community are hard to find. This resource is meant to help with those that are moderating online communities to build a sense of community offline focus on people living or working in particular neighborhoods or towns, parents of students at a particular school or all of the residents of a building or compound. These online communities are meant to promote civility, respect and thoughtfulness among members offline, and this resource is meant to help moderators and facilitators reach those goals.
   
  
• Daily, Mandatory, Minimal Tasks for Nonprofits on Facebook & Twitter
  There are a lot of nonprofits using Facebook and Twitter just to post to press releases. And if that's how your nonprofit, NGO or government agency is using social media, then your organization is missing out on most of the benefits you could gain from such. Facebook, Twitter and other social media are all about engagement. Social media is NOT one-way communication; you want people and organizations to read your information, but you also want them to respond to it. And they want YOU to respond to what THEY are saying. I broke these must-do tasks down into the most simple, basic list as possible - these tasks take minutes, not hours, a day.
• The Nonprofit & NGO Guide to Using Reddit
  As of July 2019, Reddit ranked as the No. 5 most visited website in the USA and No. 13 in the world. Reddit is a community of communities, and its communities are called subreddits. A subreddit can have a focus on a geographic area, a book, a celebrity, a particular time in history, a specific hobby - anything. Statistics suggest that 74% of Reddit users are male. Users tend to be significantly younger than other online communities like Facebook with less than 1% of users being 65 or over. If you want to reach a younger demographic regarding your volunteering opportunities, your awareness messages, your data that shows your value to the community and more, you need to build posts to Reddit into your marketing strategy, no matter what your nonprofit's size or focus. This resource tells you how to do it.
  
  
• Evaluating Online Activities: Online Action Should Create & Support Offline Action
  Hundreds of "friends" on an online social networking site. Thousands of subscribers to an email newsletter. Dozens of attendees to a virtual event. Those are impressive numbers on the surface, but if they don't translate into more volunteers, repeat volunteers, new donors, repeat donors, more clients, repeat clients, legislation, or public pressure, they are just that: numbers. For online activities to translate into something tangible, online action must create and support action. What could this look like? This resource can help organizations plan strategically about online activities so that they lead to something tangible - not just numbers.

• How to handle online criticism of your organization.

• The importance of Twitter lists

• The awesome power of tweet tags

• Why I won’t follow you on Twitter

• 14 (was 13) things you do to annoy me on social media
  A tongue-in-cheek effort to encourage mission-based organizations to do a better job with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social networking sites.

• Facebook use to organize Women’s Marches: lessons learned
  Facebook was an essential tool in organizing women’s marches all over the USA in January 2017. They may have been the largest single day of marches in US history. This blog is a list of things I learned observing the online organizing first hand.

• The dark side of the Internet for mission-based organizations

• Measuring social media success? You’re probably doing it wrong.

• Volunteers can help you reach more people on Facebook

• Snapchat’s Potential Power for Social Good – with REAL examples.

• Stages of Maturity in Nonprofit Orgs Using Online Services.

• How Not-for-Profit and Public Sector Agencies REALLY Use Online Technologies

• Police: use social media to invite community participation, show compassion

• Addressing criticism, misinformation & hate speech online

• What are good blog topics for mission-based organizations?
  The word "blog" is short for "web log", and means keeping a journal or diary online. Blogging is NOT a new concept -- people have been doing it long before it had a snazzy media label. The appeal of blogging for an online audience is that it's more personal and less formal than other information on a web site. Readers who want to connect with an organization on a more personal level, or who are more intensely interested in an organization than the perhaps general public as a whole, love blogs. Blogs can come from your Executive Director, other staff members, volunteers, and even those you serve. Content options are many, and this list reviews some of your options

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