You’ve all been told that you should be more active on social media in order to increase awareness for your nonprofit. But at the end of the day, it can seem like a constant struggle to maintain a presence on all the different platforms out there. 

Today’s nonprofit not only uses social media to raise awareness, but they also use it to collect donations and engage with supporters. When your followers are engaged, your organization “can effectively spread the word about fundraising campaigns, new initiatives, and advocacy work.”

So what does the social media landscape look like in 2017? The most popular platforms continues to be Facebook with 1.9 billion monthly users, and over 75% of users spend 20 minutes or more every day on Facebook. Instagram is the fastest growing social network, now boasting over 600 million monthly users, and Twitter follows it with 317 million monthly users and is considered to be the most saturated social media network.

Here’s a guide to some of the organizations that are doing social media right. Although many nonprofits also have a LinkedIn, Pinterest, and maybe even a Snapchat, for our “Best Nonprofits on Social Media” list, we have only accounted for these organization’s Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram following. We have computed the list by taking into account: 

  • On at least one of the aforementioned social media platforms, each nonprofit has at least 1 million followers.
  • At least 100 organizations were evaluated, and the top 25 were published.
  • Data was collected for each nonprofit for Facebook Likes and Instagram and Twitter Followers.
  • All Facebook Likes and Instagram and Twitter Followers were added up for each nonprofit, which were then ranked accordingly from greatest to smallest.
  • All data was collected as of August 2017. 

If you are a small to medium-sized nonprofit, we hope you can get inspiration from these nonprofit social media giants and take away resources to improve your own accounts!

# Nonprofit  facebook.218-3-1 Likes twittericon.218-4-1Followers instagramicon.218-5 Followers Total
1 National Geographic 44.7M  18.9M 80.2M 143.8M
2 TED Talks 10.3M 10.3M 2.1M 22.7M
3 Unicef 6.9M 6.3M 1.8M 15M
4 NPR 6.1M 7.2M 867K 14.2M
5 WikiLeaks 3.8M 4.96M 8.8K 8.8M
6 The MET 1.9M 3.5M 2M 7.4M
7  PETA 5.3M 1.02M  543K 6.9M
8 PBS 3.5M 2.3M 157K 6M
9 American Red Cross 794K 4.8M 77.8K 5.7M
10 Human Rights Watch 2.5M 3.4M 206K 5.1M
11 Save the Children 1.8M 2.84M 463K 5.1M
12  The World Bank 2.3M 2.5M 207K  5M
13 The UN Refugee Agency 2.4M  2.2M 267K  4.9M
14  WWF 2.3M 1.2M 1.2M 4.7M
15 Human Rights Campaign 2.6M 795K 358K 3.8M
16 UN High Commissioner for Refugees 1.8M 1.7M 183K 3.7M
17  The Humane Society 2.6M 674K 200K 3.5M
18 DoSomething 2.5M 811K 108K 3.4M
19 Cleveland Clinic 2.1M 1.2M 31.2K 3.3M
20  Gates Foundation 1.4M 1.8M 79.4K 3.3M
21  One 1.2M 1.7M 96.3K 3M
22 Amnesty International 1.7M 985K 92K 2.8M
23 Operation Blessing International 2.1M 650K 7.1K 2.8M
24 Mayo Clinic 1M 1.7M 45.6K 2.7M
25 St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital 2.1M 427K 181K 2.7M

 

Did we miss a nonprofit social media giant or do you have any questions about our list? Feel free to comment below or reach out to us at Elevation.

guy illustration ux

How-to-Guide: Nonprofit Marketing Plan


Other articles picked for you