Global Media Journal -- Canadian Edition

Introduction

On 14 April 2009, Australian actor Hugh Jackman sent the nonprofit and entertainment sectors abuzz when he announced on his Twitter¹ page that he would donate AUS $100,000 to the charity that, using its own Twitter account, could convince him of the worthiness of its cause in no more than the prescribed maximum posting length of 140 text characters. Ten days later, Jackman announced that two U.S.-based charities would split the proceeds of his donation: Operation of Hope, a California-based nonprofit organization (NPO) that provides facial reconstructive surgeries to children in war-torn countries; and Charity: Water, a New York-based development NPO that provides clean, potable water in developing countries.

Although this is believed to be the first time that a philanthropic initiative was sparked using a micro-blogging site, it was not the first instance of a nonprofit organization using social media to advance its cause. At the Clinton Global Initiative’s (CGI) third annual meeting in September 2007, the video-sharing company YouTube announced the YouTube Nonprofit Program, which provides participating groups with a number of features, including a premium channel to serve as a hub for their uploaded videos, and the opportunity to insert a Google Checkout donation button on their channel or video watch. In one day alone, Charity: Water reports that it collected more than $10,000 as a result of its YouTube video. During the Robbie Burns weekend in 2009, the National Trust of Scotland, a leading conservation charity, ran a Twitter-based fundraising campaign for the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum. Each time an individual donated money to the campaign via Twitter, a line of Burns’ poetry would appear on the Twitter page of the campaign’s avatar “@ayrshirebard” along with the personal recognition of the donor. And Cancer Research UK reports using Facebook and Twitter to engage supporters on an ongoing basis. For its flagship fundraising event, a 5km “Women-Only Race for Life”, supporters and survivors were provided a space online where they could seek advice, exchange tips about healthy living and rally others to the cause. For its 2009 event, the Race for Life attracted 600,000 entrants through its Facebook page. Mashable, the online “social media guide”, dubbed 2009 the “Summer of Social Good”, with several major NPOs, including World Wildlife Fund, The Humane Society, Livestrong and Oxfam America all commencing large-scale social media campaigns (Feder, 2009).

Nonprofit organizations have typically been early adopters of new technology—the Internet played an enormous role in terms of enabling charities and volunteer-based groups to expand their grassroots mobilization and advocacy efforts throughout the 1990s (Cukier & Middleton, 2003). Today, so-called social media—micro-blogging sites like Twitter, networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, or video and photo-sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr—provide organizations with opportunities to directly reach out to and engage existing and prospective members and supporters with new opportunities for sharing, collaborating, and mobilizing collective action. Shirky (2008) argues that these “new” media technologies are helping to generate “novel forms of collective action, enabling the creation of collaborative groups that are larger and more distributed than at any other time in history” (47-48). For nonprofit organizations (NPOs) the prospect of lowering the transaction costs of organizing and delivering service, and of helping enable the emergence of new social patterns, is highly appealing. Just as the corporate sector has begun to utilize social technology to penetrate new markets, build brand relationships and enhance the overall “experience” of consumers with products and services, NPOs are also seeing new opportunities borne from web-based social technologies to push for changes to public policy and build meaningful relationships with their constituencies (Kent & Taylor, 1998; Taylor, Kent & White, 2001).

The findings reported in this paper stem from the lead author’s wider research into the media strategies and communication activities of nonprofit organizations in Canada, with a focus on environmental NPOs and climate change campaigns. This broader project explores the question of whether, and to what degree, NPOs are shifting their online activities from a broadcast paradigm based on the principles of information dissemination and automated transacting (Web 1.0) to a dialogical paradigm based on the principles of member engagement and relationship building (Web 2.0). This paper focuses upon a sample of Canadian environmental nonprofit organizations (ENPOs), and explores the content of their websites and other online initiatives. Our interest is not only to review the state of the Canadian ENPO community’s online activity, but also to reflect on the value and importance of taking seriously dialogical communication, and considering the benefits and potential drawbacks in utilizing the technologies that can make this possible. We address the merits of dialogic principles, but also the potential limitations of social media use for organizations that find themselves having to operate in what are increasingly denser issue networks and environments, characterized by greater levels of competition for a shrinking pool of resources and attention from funders, policymakers and the general public.

New Media, New Society, New Opportunities, Potential Pitfalls

Now that media is [sic] increasingly social, innovation can happen anywhere …The moment we’re living through is the largest increase in expressive capability in human history…Media is [sic] increasingly less just a source of information and is [sic] increasingly more a site of coordination. (Shirky, 2009)

Media institutions, organizations and technologies are undergoing a paradigm shift. Although it is an overstatement to declare that “the mass media is dead” (Catford, 1995), it is important to acknowledge that changes in communication technology are both shaping and being shaped by new forms of social organization. Traditional mass media (broadcast television and radio, popular cinema and music, newspapers, magazines, etc.) continue to play a central role in democracy by informing citizens and shaping the focus of public conversations. However, the “top-down dissemination technologies that supported them are being supplanted by an open, many-to-many networked media environment” (Clark & Aufderheide, 2009: 1; see also Shirky, 2008). With this paradigm shift in media organization and technology, the relations between social actors are also undergoing change. In theoretical terms, the idea that there exists a national public sphere in which otherwise free individuals come together to debate issues openly and thus construct something approximating “public opinion” has been replaced by an increasingly fragmented global mediascape and the emergence of more segmented spheres of assimilation in which individualscoalesce around narrower interests.

In addition to the fragmentation of the mediascape and public sphere, contemporary society is also characterized by a “well-distributed awareness of risk” (Giddens, 1990: 125). Many of the dangers and uncertainties that societies face are widely known, even if objective, scientific knowledge about them is unclear (Irwin & Wynne, 1996). According to Giddens (1990), we live in an increasingly complex and differentiated world where pervasive risks and uncertainties have reframed the meaning of trust—trust has become more rare, precarious and valuable today than at any time in the past. While some studies have shown that public trust in scientific knowledge remains stable (Anderson, 1997), recent survey data suggest that trust in government, business and the media are low and steadily declining (Pew Research Center . . ., 2009). Nonprofit organizations trade on a currency of trust. While they may not face the same legitimacy crises as corporations and governmental institutions, they are not immune from taking credibility hits or facing the occasional trust crisis if and when organizational problems arise (Gibelman & Gelman, 2004).

For many organizations, the combination of a fragmented mediascape and changes in the wider trust environment means that credibility and legitimacy becomes an ongoing organizational achievement, and thus must be communicated differently than in the past. Rather than operating silently and below the radar, organizations are now encouraged to be more forthright, open and honest about their intentions and actions (Kelleher & Miller, 2006). In short, there is increasing pressure on organizations (in government, business and the NPO sector) to shift their communicative culture from a model of selective dissemination to one of open conversation; to become more transparent about how decisions are reached and why; and to place member engagement, participation and dialogue at the centre of all publicly-oriented organizational activities.

At first blush, these changes in expectation should be welcomed by nonprofit organizations because the rationale for them (enhance participation, generate trust, facilitate engagement) conforms to the community-based nature of work in the sector. Indeed, one of the defining features of NPOs is their expressive, non-instrumental character (Dimitrov, 2008) and the focus placed on relationships. Building from what is often a strong participative culture, nonprofits strive to bring together people with common interests, sometimes to provide them support and services, and other times to enable them to advocate on behalf of their own needs and interests. Relationships with members, donors and supporters are crucial to building an organization’s volunteer, financial and advocacy capital. As Dimitrov argues, nonprofit organizations “perform in politically and ethically active networks . . . compassion and solidarity, not competition and commensurability, direct the mission” (2008: 17). Social technologies, such as blogs, video and photo sharing sites and networking platforms, not only have the potential of enabling individuals and organizations to share content and socialize, but also to filter news and information, to organize events, and to foster collaboration and participation. Yet, these technologies do not perform on their own—they require a cultural and organizational commitment, including resource allocation in the form of time and personnel.

Despite the prospects that these forms of communication and technologies provide for enhancing an organization’s democratic culture, there are potential pitfalls involved in using them. Dialogue requires a commitment to ethical communication, which is compromised if the communicator is driven primarily by instrumental or strategic imperatives (e.g. Habermas, 1990). Increasingly, organizations in both the business and nonprofit sectors are looking to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter not to improve how they communicate with relevant stakeholders, but to be more effective in what they communicate and when. This tension between instrumental and ethical communication can pose problems for whether the organization is committing itself wholly to a deliberative process with no predetermined end-point, or whether it is driven by a desire to achieve a specific outcome motivated by sectional interests. In practical terms, dialogue does not emerge from thin air, but must be created, fostered, and nurtured—dialogue is time consuming and given its indeterminate nature can also potentially undermine the strategic imperatives of organizational communication.

Organizations that wish to be fully engaged in dialogical communication may also face a resourcing challenge. A foundation exists upon which the nonprofit sector can be transformed into a connected co-operative network; however the adoption rate of the tools and techniques required for this to spread widely remains limited (e.g. Surman & Reilly, 2003). Even though hardware and software expenses continue to decline in relative terms, the costs of maintaining and upgrading an organization’s technological infrastructure can be prohibitive, particularly for smaller organizations. Moreover, an intermediate to advanced level of technical proficiency is often required to fully utilize the range of applications available to use social networks to their capacity. Social technologies are constantly changing; utilizing them is often an ongoing process that can impose time demands on already over-extended staff and volunteers, and requires the commitment of specialized human resources that may not exist or already be at a premium.

Beyond the instrumental constraints of money and expertise, potentially incompatible cultural codes relating to online communication are a significant challenge for organizations that wish to use social technology to engage citizens in dialogue and to foster collaboration and conversation. As Greenberg and Knight (2010) argue, online communities construct, negotiate, and operate according to different norms of conduct than so-called “real” communities do. Real communities (i.e. those in shared geo-physical space) differ in fundamental ways from virtual communities inasmuch as people cannot simply log off and walk away (Postman, 1992). Moreover, because online interaction is more anonymous and based almost entirely on discursive action alone, many of the mechanisms of social control that function in offline communities are weak or absent. Social spaces in the virtual world tend to have their own cultures and informal codes of conduct—behaviours and ideas not considered appropriate for the offline world are considered to be less problematic online. Yet, online communities resemble offline communities inasmuch as they entail not only shared values and a sense of belonging but also a common project or purpose (Baym, 2000). People bring their offline interests, needs, and aspirations into the online world and create exchanges that are mediated by structures of social relevance. In this sense, the virtual and real worlds appear less to be worlds apart than they are extensions of each other (e.g. McLuhan, 1964).

Finally, as NPOs face increasing pressure to meet the reporting and evaluation demands of their funders and donors, they are having to operate with greater instrumental efficacy, by demonstrating their ability to achieve measurable outcomes. Dialogue, collaboration and coordinated action can be messy and unpredictable, and it is difficult, if not impossible, to measure conversation and collaboration. When an organization opens itself up to conversation with its constituents, it is also doing so with its critics and other onlookers. This potential loss of steering control over the conversations others have about an organization and its activities is an issue of great concern, not only to nonprofits but indeed all organizations with strategic goals and interests. We believe that deliberative models of communication that are founded on a principle of dialogue and collaboration are a more meaningful way to build communities of conscience, and that the net benefits of opening the field of communication widely outstrip its possible limitations over the longer term. However, we also recognize that in the cut and thrust of competitive politics, operating in such an open-ended manner may potentially undermine an organization’s ability to target and achieve its goals and objectives.

Methods

The 62 member organizations of the Climate Action Network Canada/Réseau action climat Canada provided the initial sample frame for this study. CAN-Canada is “committed to preventing dangerous levels of human interference with the global climate system, protecting environmental sustainability and public health, while upholding principles of just transition, equity and social justice” (“About Us”). We focus on this network of nonprofit organizations because of its leadership role in policy advocacy on climate change. As a peak organization in the environmental sector, it brings together conservationists, campaign groups, faith-based groups and labour activists to raise awareness and funds, and to push for changes to public policy.

From this initial group of 62 organizations, 19 organizations were excluded from analysis (5 French-language websites; 11 organizations that are not environmental organizations; and 3 member organizations had no website listed), leaving a total research sample of 43 websites. The organizations chosen for analysis are listed in Appendix I. The websites were analyzed using a content analysis assessment tool modified from Waters, Burnett, Lamm, and Lucas (2009), whose study examined 275 nonprofit organization Facebook profiles. Our approach involved an assessment of the homepages of ENPOs across 3 areas: information disclosure (description, history, mission statement, contact information, logo, organizational leadership, annual reports/charity number), dissemination (RSS/sign up, media releases, samples of earned media coverage, self-generated media, campaign summaries and research reports, presentations), and member engagement (Facebook page, Twitter profile, calendar of events/upcoming, volunteer opportunities, donate/join/subscribe, and store)². The findings, which we discuss in more detail below, are summarized in tabular form in Appendix II.

The values for each area represent the number of “yes” responses to 28 yes/no coded index items. This study also used coding schemes modified from Carstens (2003) analysis of 17 U.S-based environmental NGO websites to better understand the orientation of the websites (political, social/cultural, educational, recreation) and from Kent, Taylor, and White’s (2003) study of 150 environmental activist websites to identify the type of activist organization (membership-based, watchdog). The authors modified Carstens’ categories to political, social/cultural, educational/resource and stewardship to more adequately categorize the 43 organization websites and added another category (“resource-based”) to better encompass the organizational identities of the environmental organization websites examined in Kent, Taylor, and White’s (2003) study.

Homepages are commonly selected for website analysis because users tend to make judgments about website quality and functionality based on initial impressions (Ha & James, 1998). McMillan (2000) emphasizes the importance of building on prior research when performing web-based content analysis, adding that it builds rigor into variations on traditional methods. Content analysis, for example is a method originally developed for static, printed texts such as newspapers, where text is arranged in a more sequential and contained manner (Ibid). To overcome the more dynamic nature of websites, the HTML of each organization homepage was downloaded on April 26, 2009 and the time frame of analysis was between April 26-May 13, 2009, which permitted the authors to correct coding issues and check the reliability of the collected data against the results of other studies as the analysis progressed (Ibid). Koehler (1999) understands this as an opportunity to capture a “snapshot” of content, while McMillan suggests that downloading the HTML of profiles “freezes” them in time, providing a sense of standardization and control to a text that is otherwise “always in process” (2000: 93). McMillan also notes that studies performing content analysis of web-based materials must specify their time frames because “for sites that change rapidly, exact timing may become important” (92).

Research Results

The orientation and function of the ENPOs we examined in this study produced slightly different results from prior research (see Appendix III). Out of 43 websites examined, 22 (51%) are engaged primarily in “political” activities, i.e. they advocate for specific policy prescriptions and focus a majority of their organizational energy on campaigning. A good example is the Toronto Environmental Alliance. At the time of writing it recently launched a YouTube video campaign calling on city councilors to “dig conservation, not holes”, an initiative intended to preserve the countryside surrounding Canada’s largest metropolitan area. In comparison, 13 organizations (30%) are engaged primarily in “social/cultural” activities. This includes organizations seeking to change social and cultural attitudes toward the environment and sustainability. Clean Nova Scotia is a good example: it promotes actions at the individual and local level, notably information directed to individuals about recycling, composting and energy conservation. There were also an equal number of organizations with an “educational” or “recreational” mandate (n=5 or 12% in each category). Educational organizations advance scientific research in order to enlighten by providing accurate, reliable information that will foster acquisition of knowledge. Aquatic Ecosystem Health Management Society mobilizes researchers by providing scientific information that could form the basis for environmental policy. Recreational organizations, by contrast, bring together people who share a love for the outdoors and spend their leisure time doing such activities as hiking, mountain biking and backcountry skiing. Nature Saskatchewan, which promotes bird watching and other wilderness conservation activities, is illustrative of this latter category.

Drawing from Kent, Taylor, and White’s(2003) functional typology of NGOs (membership-based v. watchdog) 24 of the organization websites we examined (56%) are membership-based while 14 organizations (33%) are watchdog groups. Membership-based organizations rely on stakeholders for material and volunteer support. Their websites often cater to these information needs through providing links that inform users about how to make donations, where to attend events and other opportunities for participation. A good example drawn from our sample is Nature Canada, a membership-based group whose site displays a prominent toolbar with such options as “Donate Today”, “How to Support Us” and “Take Action”. Watchdog groups, by comparison, monitor the policy environment about ecology issues in order to hold decision-makers to account. According to Kent, Taylor, and White’s(2003), watchdog groups are not as member-driven or member-dependent and spend more of their organizational energy on lobbying and direct action campaigns. While encouraging site visitors to lobby their Member of Parliament, an organization like Just Earth functions as a watchdog group in the sense that the audience is not directed to give back to the organization but to complement its communicative labour by pushing for shared visions of environmental change. Although resources (e.g. online petitions) may be provided, building a network of volunteers or members is not the primary objective. Organizations whose orientation is primarily political were overwhelmingly represented in this category. Those with a social/cultural, educational or recreational focus tended to fall within the membership-based category. Not all of the organizations in our sample performed one of these roles exclusively or primarily, thus we added a third category, resource-provider organizations, to include those whose mission involves either financing environmental initiatives or providing the tools (e.g. water testing equipment) to organizations so that the latter may conduct research that can assist in their organizational work. From our sample, 6 organizations (14%) fell into this category. The Sage Centre, which recently changed its name to Tides Canada Initiatives, is a good example of an ENPO whose impact is achieved through its capacity to provide financing and other institutional supports. The Community Based Environmental Monitoring Network is a good example of an ENPO that provides ancillary resource supports. Housed within the department of geography at Saint Mary’s University in Nova Scotia, its organizational priorities include: assisting individuals, community groups and other organizations in the initiation of environmental monitoring, including providing loaned equipment through the Environmental Stewardship Equipment Bank; and providing long-term support for individuals, community groups and other organizations in their attempts to document actual or perceived environmental problems or threats.

Canadian ENPOs most frequently use disclosure to communicate with publics through their homepages. Information related to disclosure was easiest to identify because it was often located under the “About Us” link of a homepage. Nearly all (95.3%) of the websites examined provided a description of their organization (only two organizations, Bathurst Sustainable Development and the Edmonton Friends of the North Environment Society, did not contain an “About Us” section on their website), as well as a logo (93%). The Sage Centre branded itself with a green font but supplied no logo, while the Yukon Conservation Society had some graphics on its website but no clear logo. Both the Coalition for a Green Economy and Voters Taking Action for Climate Change were the only 2 out of 43 websites that did not provide a mailing address. One possible explanation is because these are more akin to policy watchdogs than they are member-driven organizations (Kent, Taylor & White,2003). Almost every organization provided contact information such as an email address (95%) and a phone number (93%), indicating that they attempt to make themselves available for stakeholders. A significant number (86%) of the websites communicated a clear mission statement that was easily identifiable as well as organizational information about the board of directors and/or project coordinators, adding a layer of transparency to their disclosure activities (Kenix, 2007; Waters, 2007).

Many Canadian ENPOs are not making their annual reports or registered charity numbers available on their websites (Kenix, 2007; Taylor, Kent & White, 2001). Out of 43 websites examined, 23 organizations (54%) made this information easily accessible, with 1 organization (Greenpeace Canada) offering to provide it upon request. This has implications for establishing credibility and demonstrating organizational accountability online (Waters, 2007). On a related note, almost half of the sites examined (49%) provided a detailed description of the organization’s history. This also has implications for establishing credibility and engaging stakeholders because organizational histories can be used effectively as a narrative, story-telling device that can resonate with existing and prospective members, contributors and donors/supporters.

Most surprising were the low levels of disclosure regarding new media presence. At the time of research, 9 websites publicized a Facebook profile; an additional 12 organizations with a Facebook presence failed to identify this information on their homepages, suggesting that websites are not being carefully updated. Similarly, while five websites featured a “Follow Us on Twitter” link, an additional four maintained Twitter profiles that curiously were not indicated. Kent, Taylor, and White(2003) note that many organizations make website maintenance a “b-list job”, which essentially means that they are ignoring a crucial part of their communication strategy, not to mention their overall organizational mission. Furthermore, the authors take a cue from White and Raman’s (1999) study of the web as a public relations medium when they observe that organizations were using their websites as more of a “‘status symbol’ or ‘image building’ tool than as a relationship-building tool” (Kent, Taylor & White,2003: 73).

Levels of involvement, or opportunities for participation, were lower than organizational levels of disclosure. A significant percentage (77%) of the websites promoted some type of financial activity on the homepage, either through a direct donation solicitation or a membership/subscription fee—21% of the organizations had an online store for users to purchase branded products that were part of wider social marketing campaigns³. Waters (2007) encourages nonprofits to separate donation and e-commerce activities and minimize the language of the marketplace on their websites to emphasize their charity activity rather than the business operations. While there is still debate about the effectiveness of volunteer engagement online, we might wonder if Canadian ENPOs could make stronger attempts: only 23 of the 43 websites (54%) posted volunteer opportunities and 31 websites (72%) posted a calendar of upcoming events, such as fundraisers, public talks and advocacy activities. These findings delimit public action to a narrow range of activities involving mostly financial contributions and episodic event support.

Levels of information dissemination were inconsistent in certain areas. Many organizations posted photos (81%), campaign summaries (84%), and research reports, including publications and presentations (81%). However, tools that directly communicate with and engage stakeholders were less frequently used. A modest percentage of organizations (69%) provided self-generated media in the form of a newsletter and only 58% posted media releases and backgrounders. Organizations can strengthen their public identities and enhance their advocacy, outreach and fundraising capacity by self-publishing and having direct contact with traditional media outlets. Greenpeace is one organization that comes to mind: Not only does it understand the visual bias of mainstream media coverage about environmental issues (Dale, 1996; Deluca, 1999), but its frequently updated, information-rich, interactive media centre (prominently displayed on its homepage) enables it to provide “information subsidies” (Gandy, 1982) to journalists and other media professionals. By providing content for media outlets, Greenpeace amplifies its media exposure—its media omnipresence is one reason why Greenpeace is arguably the world’s most ubiquitous environmental activist group⁴. Increasing the level of an organization’s public visibility can not only build its broader profile and reputation as a credible and reliable news source, it can also enhance the organization’s ‘cultural’ and ‘media’ capital (Bourdieu, 1992; Davis, 2003).

Web 2.0 technologies were also frequently under-utilized. Just 63% (n=27) of the websites in the sample maintained a blog or other space to post news items, and the same number of sites allowed members to subscribe to a newsletter or listserv via email or through an RSS feed. This was a curious trend because generating regular and routine visits to a website is much easier when members receive updates and emails. Like email, RSS is a personalized communication channel that tailors content to suit web users’ information needs on a consistent basis, making regular engagement with news much easier. With RSS readers, audiences can subscribe to specific websites, and even specific portions of a site (e.g. subscribing to an organization’s calendar of events or its newsletter). RSS features also simplify news information by offering headlines that give audiences the opportunity to search through a large amount of content quickly and easily. This provides a way for organizations to ensure that messages reach the intended audience (whether it engages them is an altogether different question). Additionally, updating a website requires less technical proficiency when blogging tools are used as a platform, because site administrators need only post new items instead of reworking the HTML coding. Furthermore, despite the increased availability of broadband Internet connections and Web 2.0 applications such as YouTube that have resolved previously slow download times, it was surprising that only 21% (n=9) of the websites used embedded video to share news and information with their site visitors. Use of pure audio content (e.g. podcasts) was also low. Kent and Taylor (2003) encourage organizations to post recorded speeches and media conferences on their sites not only to create a public record but to also provide visitors with the opportunity to interact with information asynchronously. Despite this recommendation, only three websites featured audio files. With the widespread adoption of weekly podcasts that users can update themselves, for example, organizations are failing to utilize media technology that is relatively accessible and inexpensive. Only one organization, The David Suzuki Foundation, used this feature at the time of research. Through iTunes, the Suzuki Foundation offers a free regularly updated podcast that brings in expert speakers to discuss issues related to oceans and sustainable fishing, climate change and clean energy, sustainability and The Nature Challenge (promoting a new environmentally-friendly activity for audiences). The major benefit of podcasts is its portability: users are able to access and listen to the content wherever and whenever they like, and frequently through their personal computing or mobile media device (e.g. Blackberry, iPhone). In order to reach audiences that are increasingly becoming fragmented due to the proliferation of media choice, organizations should be connecting with them in the spaces and manner where they live, work and study.

Dialogical tools are also being underutilized. With interactive technologies such as live chat and discussion boards, it is surprising that fewer than 10% (n=4) of the websites examined contained these features. Unlike Park and Reber’s (2008) study of Fortune 500 websites that considered email to be a valid and potentially effective mode of dialogue, we argue that email lacks the sense of immediacy available through such platforms as live chat and discussion boards. We do consider asynchronous many-to-many forms of communication such as message boards to be dialogic, however, since in theory at least they facilitate conversation. At the moment, however, message boards appear to be absorbed into the social-networking profiles of ENPOs. Greenpeace and The David Suzuki Foundation have fans in the thousands who comment on postings and pose additional questions. It appears that their audiences are engaging with content through more non-traditional methods. Compare this to reader feedback on the organization’s blogs: Although most of the ENPO blogs contained a “Comment” feature, blog posts seldom had the responses evident on an organization’s social-networking site. This may be because most of the blogs were not embedded into the homepage but were available through a separate link, reinforcing the claim made by Dutton, Elberse, and Hale (1999) that users rarely leave a website’s main page. This makes a stronger argument for having and maintaining a social-networking presence since many users might not be actually leaving their social-networking sites. Indeed, through features such as Facebook connect and linking, users may be consuming outside content while staying within their social-networking site.

Conclusion

As the Internet continues to develop, nonprofit organizations are beginning to change how they communicate, organize, campaign and fundraise. Simply thinking of their communications work as involving “message dissemination” is no longer enough. Organizations are now going beyond using their Facebook account to announce an event or their Twitter page to solicit donations; instead they are increasingly using social technologies to build networks of collaborators, to grow their conscience constituencies and to foster a new era of creativity and symmetrical communication between message senders and receivers. Charity: Water, the development NGO mentioned in the introduction to this paper, not only organized the first-ever “Twestival”—a series of 200 off-line Twitter-based charity events that raised more than $250,000 from 10,000 new donors—it also orchestrated a live drill in Ethiopia for its supporters, which it broadcast via satellite. Supporters were able to tweet questions for the drillers and receive feedback in real time. During the Afghan elections of 2009, the Alive in Afghanistan project, a pro-democracy NGO leveraged the instant messaging capabilities of mobile technology, allowing voters with a cellular phone to report disturbances and vote tampering as they were occurring on the ground. Using crowd-sourced crisis-mapping data, the project coordinators plotted the SMS reports online as a way of not only documenting what was happening, but also to inform future electoral reform initiatives. Environmental organizations have also been innovators in social media use. From the U.S. to Europe and Africa, environmental bloggers and activists are increasingly using new media tools and technologies to highlight such problems as deforestation, conservation and global warming.

The majority of websites examined for this study are not operating with the same commitment to creativity, innovation and dialogical communication as those mentioned above; rather, with some notable exceptions, Canadian environmental nonprofit organizations appear to be locked in a broadcast paradigm—they are using their online presence to disseminate messages broadly to a mass audience but are doing little in the way of using their web presence to foster a two-way flow of communication. Such automated transactions (sending/receiving email, announcing events, providing basic organizational information, some e-commerce, and posting research reports) ultimately do not take advantage of the opportunities borne from web-based tools to engage supporters, to foster networks of activists and truly engender new forms of knowledge co-production, cooperation and collective action. NPOs should be leaders in using social technologies to grow and strengthen their networks. These are, after all, relationship-driven organizations: online communities and social media offer a new way of harnessing existing loyalty and passion. Yet, the data reported in this study suggest that this potential remains mostly untapped.

While we believe our findings and recommendations are representative of the Canadian nonprofit environmental sector, we acknowledge the study’s limitations. A sample of 43 websites does not capture the full range of communicative labour among ENPOs, let alone the wider nonprofit sector. Future studies might expand the sample size by looking at members of the Climate Action Network in the United States and European Union. A study of these organizations might provide some interesting comparisons and help strengthen our findings or identify other interesting patterns and themes. It is also unclear why there is such a notable gap between the potential for online communication and the performance of ENPOs. Future research will need to be conducted that goes beyond examining the manifest content of websites—using interviews or ethnographic research, scholars may wish to explore the decision-making process behind why some online strategies are pursued and not others.

The ever-changing nature of web content also limits this study. The analysis was performed in April-May 2009. Yet, at publication date, many organizations may have already implemented some of the suggested approaches we identify in this study. The time of study may have also occurred during a period of site redesign and reconstruction. The website of at least one organization was “under construction” at the time of coding, but has since come back online. At publication date, the homepage of another is now no longer available. Many organizations have also implemented a Facebook and/or a Twitter account, showing a level of adaptation that the data do not capture⁵. For scholars performing content analyses of websites, this study reinforces the need to save an HTML or PDF version of web material for archival purposes. For our own use, this made it much easier for us to identify changes in web design over time as well as note the timeframe in which these changes occurred.

Not all organizations will be able to fully incorporate the benefits that social technologies can provide, nor will they wish to. For some, the dialogical orientation of these media may create new administrative demands that outstrip an organization’s “communicative capacity” (Greenberg & Grosenick, 2008). Conversation, collaboration and other modes of two-way communication are time consuming and they do not always produce immediate or tangible results. Also, not every organization desires a relationship with their constituencies that is based on two-way, symmetrical communication. Many NPOs are strategically oriented—their communicative culture is thus geared less to achieving mutual understanding through an open-ended process of exchange, than upon securing successful outcomes, whether that’s measured in terms of funds raised, policies changed or memberships/subscriptions sold. In other words, communication for these organizations is strategic—it is a means to a predetermined end. Other organizations are used to operating below the radar, keeping to themselves and delimiting the range of other organizations or actors with whom they may share or exchange information. While online presence may allow these organizations new ways of getting the message out, their communicative culture may not encourage input from outside the organization into decision-making processes. Finally, not every organization in the nonprofit sector (whether focused on environmental or other issues) may have the resources for developing a dynamic online presence. Although the costs of adapting to changes in communication technology are dropping considerably, there may still exist a digital divide between organizations that have the financial and human resources to do so successfully.