Can Internal Social Media Tools Help Non-Profits?

Of course it can, if it wasn't for Search Engine Optimization I probably wouldn't have phrased it as a question.

But It seems like most of the discussion about social media within organizations revolves around what you can do to promote your organization or business to the outside world, but not necessarily the ways in which it can help your organization function internally. I've listed a couple services below I think can help!

To me, social media is important for internal cooperation, project management and overall communication between people within an organization. After all, social media hinges on participation.

Now aside from social media being used for productivity, I actually came across an article that surprisingly shows, Facebook, Twitter and leisure browsing of the web can increase productivity by 9%. This is hard to see as fact, but to me it makes sense. The argument is that it helps to take a brain break every once in a while. I believe that - but I also see using social networks at work as the ability to shift focus from project to project, social network to email, phone to computer, conversation to paper, etc.

So there are a lot of good reasons to use social media at work! Of course with any new tools there will be a need to train, but if you implement some of these tools on a department level it can be an easy and a great way to change the culture of your organization for the better!

Here's a couple of useful tools that in my experience have worked really well:

BaseCamp

I actually used this during my time in television production and suggested we use it at a nonprofit I worked at. It became very useful for us and they really couldn't do without it! You can watch the videos with the link, but essentially it's a social community project management tool. Admins can create users, employees can then go into post to do list, timelines, files, comments, send messages to everyone listed on the project, etc etc. One helpful feature for Marketing and Development departments is the "Writeboard" which allows easy wiki like editing of a common document for grants, ad copy, fundraising copy, etc.

Basecamp offers a reasonable price for starting out, most organizations can work within the $24 per month with 15 projects (of which you can delete, create new, etc)

PBWiki

Search for the free solution on PBWiki, it offers a lot that you can work with. When I used this last there were only 3 logins that you are allowed under the free license. So set up an administrator and a employee login. It's great if you need a large group of people to comment and give opinions on some documents, timelines, project initiatives, etc, you can also use it as a "Writeboard" like Basecamp uses. It can also be used for a basic employee portal to store company documents/policies.

Skype

I am learning more and more how important this is for non-profits. It gets underestimated as a chat program by those who aren't using it. But using some sort of chat service within the office is great for communication. Now Skype offers screen share which could be a huge asset for IT departments to train and help with those annoying day-to-day request an IT departments get.

There are several ways to set up Skype to be able to only chat with those on your network and you IT department or network person can help with that! The main obstacle is mental when it comes to allowing messenger programs like this in the office!

Get Drop Box

I really enjoy this free service, the site is so simple and direct. This is great for sharing large files which many people have to worry about since most email services reject emails within 5-10 mb.

This service helps to send those large graphic files or pictures of an event, etc. Its free, very simple and very easy to use! The desktop client works for both Mac and Windows which is nice!

So those are a few ideas! It's a start!