Tell Your Nonprofit's Story on LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s recent announcements to allow users the option to add volunteer service to their profiles and to provide expanded resources for nonprofits have generated a lot of buzz. By now many have read any of a number of articles, including one on our site, about these new features. But what does this really mean for nonprofit organizations and their missions?

Like other social sites, LinkedIn is a place to tell your story and connect with others – and LinkedIn’s new and expanded tools make that even easier for nonprofit organizations.

Expanded Features for Conversation and Connection

• Volunteer profiles showcase a segment of an organization’s supporter base that together with a nonprofit’s staff support a common cause. Volunteer profiles allow an organization to learn about their supporters; volunteers in turn demonstrate their support for an organization’s cause. 
• Company pages provide an official LinkedIn presence, which staff, volunteers, and other supporters can join to follow your organization’s latest news and announcements. It also provides a way for users to learn about the staff and volunteers that make up your organization’s network. Organization’s can add their blog or website’s RSS feed to automatically stream news content to their Company page. Nonprofits that are active on Twitter can also have their tweets appear on their Company page.
• Career pages, located within Company pages, give organizations the ability to not only post job openings but to give prospective job applicants some insight into the organization’s culture and values. Career pages help nonprofits and the right people to serve that organization’s cause find one another more easily than is possible on other job search sites.
• Organizations that want to encourage conversation, particularly conversation around their cause, can always set up a Group on LinkedIn. A Group will require ongoing management and will take time to build but the pay off will be worth it when staff and volunteers develop connections through LinkedIn. Through Groups, organizations can send a regular email to group members to alert them to important, ongoing discussions and questions asked by other group members.

Many organizations’ staff and volunteers are already on LinkedIn and with expanded nonprofit tools there is now more reason than ever for nonprofits to invest some time strengthening the very connections that will help their cause.

Additional Resources

And if you are interested in helping your staff and volunteers understand why LinkedIn matters for your and their cause, you can refer them to the following resources:

• LinkedIn Learning Center: Nonprofits
• Nonprofit Social Media Wiki: LinkedIn
• LinkedIn Nonprofit Solutions (Presentation)
• Nonprofit strategies for getting more out of LinkedIn
• LinkedIn: A Powerful Tool for Nonprofits (pre-recorded webinar)
• Check Out LinkedIn’s Learning Center