Opening the Garden Gate: Access and Community on Nonprofit Social Media
Behind the Garden Wall
What comes to mind when you think of a garden? I think of beauty, contemplation, growth, and maybe getting some dirt under my fingernails. But as its etymology might suggest, a garden can also be something closed off, guarded. When I joined the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in late 2016, it was like a seed had just been planted and it could grow to mean any or all of these things.
The foundation was created by Rachel Lambert “Bunny” Mellon, a wealthy centenarian socialite who had passed away in 2014 and left a few hundred acres – and a few hundred million dollars – from her estate to be used for the public’s benefit. Bunny Mellon famously had a lifelong passion for horticulture, which led her to redesign the White House Rose Garden for President Kennedy, and to amass a peerless collection of botanical rare books and manuscripts dating back to the 14th century. She was also known for being intensely private in life, with her Oak Spring estate in Upperville, Virginia only being open to her family and closest friends.
So when world-renowned botanist Sir Peter Crane was recruited in 2016 as the foundation’s inaugural president and given the mandate of taking these remarkable assets and turning them into a meaningful program for public good, it meant prizing open the literal and figurative doors to Bunny Mellon’s walled garden in ways that it never had before.
Crane hired me as an intern fresh out of my undergraduate studies to help establish the foundation’s public presence. I set up a website, a blog, and several social media accounts – Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Seven years later and I myself have grown – into the role of Head of Communications – and I can see how vital these social media channels have been in the realization of the foundation’s mission.
“The mission of the Oak Spring Garden Foundation (OSGF) is to perpetuate and share the gifts of Rachel (“Bunny”) Lambert Mellon, including her residence, garden, estate and the Oak Spring Garden Library, to serve the public interest. OSGF is dedicated to inspiring and facilitating scholarship and public dialogue on the history and future of plants, including the culture of gardens and landscapes and the importance of plants for human well-being.”
When speaking with stakeholders I explain our online channels’ dual purpose like this: there is communication of our program, and there is communication as a program. The former is basically the marketing function of social media, leveraging our owned media platforms to garner interest in the on-site activities that are central to our mission. The latter is treating social media as a vehicle to contribute to our mission directly, by educating and inspiring the public around the world of plants. Both of these functions contribute to the tangential but vital role of fostering community, something that I think is key for any successful nonprofit organization.
Communication of a Program
Source: Global Trends in Giving Survey
In today’s digital age, social media can be a crucial tool for nonprofits to achieve their strategic goals. In a sense this is similar to the commercial sector – namely in that direct connection with publics can help drive revenue. A decade ago researchers at the University of Kentucky and the University at Buffalo, SUNY observed that among the 100 largest nonprofits in the U.S., organizations which rely on donations to operate were more likely to implement social media into their communication strategies than organizations that rely primarily on government funding (Nah & Saxton, 2013). Social media platforms today not only have relatively simple and affordable digital advertising options, but public engagement on these channels also raises awareness of the organization and may drive donations.
The Oak Spring Garden Foundation is in the fortunate position of having an endowment that significantly reduces its reliance on fundraising, but the marketing value of social media has still been undeniable. As a private operating foundation, OSGF is required to meet its charitable distribution requirements through the direct conduct of its activities, rather than by making grants to other entities. This has meant developing on-site educational programs at the Oak Spring estate that will draw people from local, national, and international audiences, which in turn has required public awareness to spread just as far. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram allow us to find new audiences and to share compelling narratives that resonate with these audiences, which has been our primary method for announcing and filling our on-site programs.
Communication as a Program
The second major function that social media has allowed is more difficult to quantify than reaching fundraising goals or increasing program attendance. Unlike commercial organizations which must generate profits for their stakeholders, most nonprofit organizations exist to serve a public need. For a commercial organization, a PR or corporate social responsibility campaign might serve the public interest, but it also is ultimately focused on contributing to organizational legitimacy and the bottom line. For nonprofits, such campaigns are often means and ends to themselves.
Strategic communication researcher Dr. Jasper Fessmann has identified what he labels an emergent field of communication research, public interest communication (PIC), which uses public relations concepts and techniques, but puts them in service of a broader objective to significantly improve a societal problem and sustain that improvement over time.
“Public interest communication is the development and implementation of science based, planned strategic communication campaigns with the main goal of achieving significant and sustained positive behavioural change on a public interest issue that transcends the particular interests of any single organisation. ”
OSGF’s mission treats public dialogue around the world of plants as an activity in the public’s interest, and social media is fertile ground for achieving this. For every post on a channel like Instagram that announces or advertises an on-site program, there is at least one or two others that simply share inspiring and informative stories about landscapes, conservation, or under-recognized figures in the history of plant science. Engagement on these posts represents an achievement towards the foundation’s strategic goal, regardless of whether it drives donations or program attendance or not.
Oak Spring Garden Foundation’s Latest Instagram Posts
Cultivating Community
So social media is a cheap and effective means for raising awareness of a nonprofit’s activities, but is that enough? Perhaps, to an extent. Grunig & Hunt (1984) modeled four types of public relations that organizations can participate in: press agentry, public information, two-way asymmetrical, and two-way symmetrical. The first two involve organization’s sharing information without soliciting public feedback. Social media makes it very easy for organizations to disseminate information, but the revolution of Web 2.0 and user-generated content has vastly increased the capacity for organizations to engage in two-way dialogue, and treating social media as a public bulletin board can be a major missed opportunity for nonprofits.
Researchers have compared the various types of engagement features on social media sites (likes, shares, comments) to Grunig & Hunt’s PR models and found that only two-way symmetrical message strategies – that is, posts that engage public feedback without rigidly enforcing the organization’s views – garnered the most comments.
“Publics are savvy enough to distinguish between whether organizations are trying to build a relationship with them and taking advantage of the social relationship opportunities afforded on Facebook.”
Access, awareness, and community can all be invaluable assets to nonprofit organizations, and all of these can be achieved to some extent on social media. These platforms are powerful tools that can transform how nonprofits communicate, connect, and inspire. By effectively showcasing programmatic activities and turning communication into a program itself, organizations can grant access and visibility into their work while fostering a sense of community among their supporters. As nonprofits continue to leverage the potential of social media, they are poised to make an even greater impact on the causes they champion.
References
Cho, M., Schweickart, T., & Haase, A. (2014). Public engagement with nonprofit organizations on Facebook. Public Relations Review, 40(3), 565-567.
Fessmann, J. (2016). The emerging field of public interest communications. In E. Oliveira, A. D. Melo, & G. Gonçalves, Strategic communication for non-profit organisations: Challenges and alternative approaches. Vernon Press.
Grunig, J. E., & Hunt, T. (1984). Managing public relations. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Nah, S., & Saxton, G. D. (2013). Modeling the adoption and use of social media by nonprofit organizations. New Media & Society, 15(2), 294–313.