8 Tips to Boost Your Nonprofit's Reach With LinkedIn

While Facebook has billions of users, many professionals prefer to use it exclusively for personal purposes. LinkedIn is not merely a site to host your online resume. It has become a major business-oriented social network for professionals and organizations.

LinkedIn can be a valuable and effective tool for sales and marketing teams. With over 500 million members and a lot of activity from c-level professionals and decision-makers, it's a vibrant community for business.

A recent study showed that that 61% of people surveyed used LinkedIn for professional networking, compared to 22% for Facebook and 4% for Twitter.

It can also be a great tool for those who work in development at nonprofits. The Vice President of Philanthropy, or similar such title, is the nonprofit counterpart of a Business Development Director at a for-profit company. 

If sales folks can use LinkedIn to find prospects, warm leads, recruit and get referrals, then many of the same principles should apply to the nonprofit world.

Growing membership, finding sponsors and new donors, connecting with existing donors, getting referrals--all of these activities are well suited to this particular social network.

Make sure your nonprofit starts with a well-structured, professional page. These are called company pages, but nonprofits can use them for their organizational page as well. You can find so many great LinkedIn resources for nonprofits here.

Here are a few ideas for getting sponsors and promoting your nonprofit on LinkedIn once you've established your presence.

1. Create a LinkedIn Group for Members or Influencers

This group can prove beneficial in many ways. It works as a communication platform for you and your supporters. Conversation in your group should be polite and businesslike, focused on supporting your cause and each other professionally. It should rarely (never) be a place to ask directly for donations. Make sure the group is closed and permission-based. This will help you keep out spammers and self-promoters.

You can use this group in a variety of ways, from a sounding board for new ideas to a tight network for making community connections.

2. Connect Corporate Donors to Your Cause

LinkedIn is a great place for the corporate world and the nonprofit world to meet and work together for the common good. You can find and connect to people by location, industry, profession and key demographics that will help you target just the right people to get on board.

Create unique nonprofit sponsorship packages and post them on LinkedIn to find corporate donors to sponsor an event, program or initiative.

3. Encourage Staff, Volunteers and Supporters to List Your Nonprofit Organization

LinkedIn provides a Volunteer Experience and Causes section on each user’s profile. Your employees, supporters, volunteers and board members can list your organization in this section of their profile. A nonprofit organization associated with a large number of business professionals gets more attention.

Encourage your supporters to list your organization on their profile. They are your strongest advocates and many of them are likely already active on LinkedIn. Supporters will want to showcase their service and champion your organization on their professional profiles as well.

4. Find Volunteers and Board Members

Not only can individuals list the causes they've been a part of, they can also list volunteer opportunities they are looking for. Nonprofits can leverage this feature to find volunteers and board members who are willing and ready to serve.

5. Join the Board Member Connect Program

LinkedIn has really embraced the idea that our professional profiles include more than what we do during the 9-5 work day. Board membership and service to the community is part of what it means to be a professional. Our work and lives are tightly interconnected and the platform reflects that with the way they've included new features and training for nonprofits.

6. Update Your Organization Page Regularly

You can post updates about activities, programs and events on this page regularly. Your nonprofit organization will gain access to many followers through positive news updates.

Like any social media network, you need to maintain a consistently active presence to reap the rewards.

Many professionals will visit your organization’s LinkedIn page to get information and news. You must upload a proper logo, a description, a link to your website, as well as other social networking services. An impressive page on LinkedIn will present your organization and its cause in a better way. You can find more tips about how to leverage the full power of company page here.

7. Get Involved in LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to access thousands of groups. You should join your cause-related groups and act as a valuable resource in these groups. You can do this by sharing useful links, asking questions, commenting about posts and participating in all the activities of these groups.

Unfortunately, the majority of groups have gotten a bit spammy and noisy. However, there are some groups that are extremely high-value and this can be a great place to make new connections.

So how do you find a group that works for you? The key is to find a group that has a tightly targeted audience, is approval-only and is well-aligned with your mission.

Pro-tip: if groups like this don't exist for your market, consider creating one! Then you're the leader and are in an even more visible position.

8. Finding and Hiring Passionate Team Members

So if you happen to be in the market to add to your team, LinkedIn is where it's at. Well, it's where a lot of qualified candidates are at, anyway. How do you go about wading through these waters of seemingly endless professionals? It starts with creating a job post, but there are many other tools available to help nonprofits find dedicated and qualified staff members.

LinkedIn Nonprofit Solutions offers staff sourcing tools to the nonprofit community at significant price reductions, depending on region. If you're slightly larger organization and hire more than 5 positions a year, you can use LinkedIn Talent Solutions to help you recruit more efficiently and effectively.

By making a strong presence on LinkedIn your nonprofit organization can not only further your brand presence, but leverage unique tools to connect to qualified volunteers, board members and staff.

And here’s a bonus reason: Virtually any nonprofit can use LinkedIn tools in a strategic way to help them achieve its goals.

Whether you’re trying to increase your visibility, market your services, recruit great staff or share your expertise, you can use LinkedIn to help you get there.

Thank you so much for reading and sharing,

Joshua B Lee

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