Stakeholder Communication in 140 Characters or Less: A Study of Community Sport Foundations

Abstract

Community sport foundations (CSFs), like other non-profit organizations (NPOs), are increasingly employing social media such as Twitter to communicate their mission and activities to their diverse stakeholder groups. However, the way these CSFs utilize social media for communicating such practices remains unclear. Through a mixed-method approach of content analysis of Tweets from 22 CSFs established by English professional football clubs and interviews with key individuals within these CSFs (n = 7), this study examines the extent to which CSFs' core activities are being communicated through Twitter and identifies the strategies employed for doing so. Reflecting the target audiences CSFs are seeking to reach through Twitter and the challenges associated with communication about projects involving marginalized groups, tweets largely concern programs related to sports participation and education. The most frequently employed communication strategy is to inform, rather than interact or engage with stakeholders. However, CSFs with higher organizational capacity attempt to go beyond mere informing toward engaging with stakeholder groups that relate to their social agenda, highlighting the importance of trained and dedicated social media personnel in optimizing CSFs' use of Twitter for communication.

Success in an Online Giving Day: The Role of Social Media in Fundraising

“…It would appear that investment in and engagement with the organization’s social media presence leading up to an online Giving Day produces returns in the form of higher donations and a greater number of donors. Thus, our findings substantiate the potential of social media in spurring action in the form of donor engagement with a nonprofit (Anagnostopoulos et al, 2017; Saxton & Wang, 2014).…”

“…However, that is not to discount the role resource capacity plays in establishing and maintaining a social media presence. Anagnostopoulos et al (2017) highlight the critical role organizational capacity plays in the manner in which social media is utilized by nonprofits, showing how larger community sports foundations were able to devote more resources (human and financial) to using Twitter for engaging and interacting with stakeholders, not just for disseminating information. In our study, the typical (i.e., median) small nonprofit had fewer likes (577), made fewer posts (3), and experienced lower levels of sharing of said posts (2) than medium (746, 4, 3) and large organizations (1,442, 5, 5) respectively.…”

“…An emerging body of literature has explored how nonprofits utilize social media to communicate and engage with stakeholders (Anagnostopoulos, Gillooly, Cook, Parganas, & Chadwick, 2017; Guo & Saxton, 2014; Hambrick & Svensson, 2015; Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012; Quinton & Fennemore, 2013; Waters & Jamal, 2011). However, there are fewer studies examining the link between social media usage and fundraising success (Castillo, Petrie, & Wardell, 2014; Dixon & Keyes, 2013; Lacetera, Macis, & Mele, 2016; Saxton & Wang, 2014).…”

Twitter and Research: A Systematic Literature Review Through Text Mining

“…Public Relations: This theme is seen in papers which utilize Twitter in public relations for different firms such as nonprofit organizations [222], media organizations [223], state health departments [224], global organizations [225], and Fortune 1000 companies [226]. The trend of public relations does not have a significant change over time.…”

Organizational Generativity, Social Media and the Co-creation of Nonprofit Services: A Sociomateriality Perspective

“…For-profit organizations use social media as a marketing and customer relationship strategy aimed at improving sales and maximizing profits [1,2]. In nonprofits, social media is widely recognized for information sharing, community creation, collective action, maintaining relationships [3][4][5]. The key activities of nonprofits on social media and the associated outcome or consequence of such activities are not yet fully defined and illustrated.…”