As nonprofits grapple with unease over Twitter’s future, many are taking a wait-and-see approach to the social network, while others have paused or redirected resources from the website toward other platforms.
Since acquiring the company in October, billionaire Elon Musk has purged its 7,500-person work force, including roles critical to content moderation, and promised to restore scores of accounts previously banned for harassment, violence, or misinformation. The moves have led nonprofits to reconsider their presence on the platform, whose future appears increasingly uncertain.
“There’s been quite a lot of confusion,” says Sean Gibbons, CEO of the Communications Network, an organization that provides professional training to nonprofit and foundation communicators and that has been compiling nonprofits’ responses to the changes. “That’s a reflection,” he says, “of some of the chaos that appears to be occurring inside of Twitter since it went private.”
Over the past month, CFLeads, a network of community foundations, has reduced its presence on Twitter in favor of LinkedIn. While LinkedIn is not a perfect replacement, lacking the broader reach that Twitter provides, it’s been serving the network well as it considers whether to delete its Twitter account altogether in the new year.
“Twitter might not still exist, but whether it’s a place that we really want to be a part of is still up in the air,” says Melody MacLean, director of communications at CFLeads.
Many organizations that already paid for advertising on Twitter have also put a pause on their campaigns, says Gibbons, while many nonprofits seem to have reduced their use of the platform. As they watch what happens at Musk’s Twitter, many organizations have not ruled out leaving the network altogether. That wouldn’t be such a bad thing, according to Gibbons.
“Most of these platforms are just a piece of the puzzle for folks who are communicating for fundraising purposes or to share information. It’s a tool,” says Gibbons. “It’s actually a much smaller tool than a lot of people necessarily realize.”
Privacy and Ethics
NTEN, a membership-based collective of nonprofit technology professionals, left Facebook and Instagram years ago over privacy and ethics concerns. So the group was quick to reconsider its presence on Twitter at the first rumblings of discord. When Musk acquired the company in late October, the organization stopped paying for ads on the website and sharply reduced the time and resources dedicated to creating content for Twitter.
“It felt like we were complicit by being part of a platform that was enabling a lot of harm in unchecked ways,” says NTEN CEO Amy Sample Ward, who noted that the group feels an additional layer of responsibility as a technology-focused organization.
NTEN now uses Twitter only to promote listings that appear on the group’s job board, and it is waiting to decide about leaving the platform entirely. LinkedIn is now the group’s only form of active social media, but NTEN isn’t rushing to adopt new social networks. The majority of its connections come through its newsletters, online groups, and other channels.
“The biggest worthwhile investment has never been someone else’s platform,” says Sample Ward. “It’s always been your own.”
What Donors and Other Players Need
While some employees have begun experimenting with Mastodon, a service that some people who had been on Twitter are adopting, Sample Ward recommends that nonprofits not rush into new technologies before they learn how the platforms work and fit into the preferences of the people they serve. They may want to consider surveying their donors and other key players in their work to find out which social media networks they use the most — and focus on cultivating a presence there.
For Sample Ward, there’s a silver lining to the conversations being sparked by the tumult at Twitter.
“Wherever we go, whatever we build, and whatever comes next, we’re going to do it with an explicit conversation about the values we want in that platform and why we need that platform,” says Sample Ward. “And that will already mean it will be so much better.”
Where to Share Ideas?
It’s that sort of discourse that Phil Buchanan, president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, will miss the most if Twitter becomes unusable or unrecognizable under Musk’s leadership. While the platform has never been a focal point for online fundraising, it’s been a major player in the exchange of ideas, trends, and commentary about the future of philanthropy and nonprofits.
“There’s a lot of productive discourse and learning about different practices and approaches that happens there,” says Buchanan, who’s put a pause on both his organization’s Twitter presence and his own personal account. “I think it can happen somewhere else, but the question is, where?”
While the center plans to decide about permanently leaving Twitter in the coming weeks, Buchanan has become increasingly unsure whether the platform will still be a valuable space for nonprofits concerned with social good.
“If there’s some stability that comes back to Twitter and a reason to believe that racism, antisemitism, and lies are not going to be tolerated on the platform,” he says, “then I think we would be more open to returning.”
