| The primary focus of this qualitative multiple case study was to determine how social media marketing was being used by nonprofit organizations for various nonprofit volunteer management functions. Nonprofits are beginning to adopt various forms of social media as part of a low cost marketing strategy. However, some organizations are still unsure of how to use these tools for various volunteer management functions of recruitment, retention, communication and rewarding of volunteers. Social media can be used to reach volunteers that an organization may not have been able to reach in the past. This study used netnography, content analysis, and interviews to review how nonprofits were using social media as a marketing tool. The participants included six organizations that were interviewed about their social media use. Four additional nonprofit organizations Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter were studied, along with the original six organizations social media. The themes that emerged in this study included recruitment in social media, retention/rewarding in social media, and communication in social media. Based on the research it was discovered that the majority of the organizations with revenues of less than one million dollars did not effectively use social media marketing for volunteer management functions; however, all of the organizations with annual revenues of over one million dollars did use social media for volunteer management functions of recruitment, retention, communication, and rewarding. |
