Twitter and the Generation Gap
Social networks for non-profits? My goodness what’s out there?
Yesterday, I had a non-profit employee tell me that some non-profits were using a thing called Twitter to raise money. She had seen an article or some comments on Techsoup about this and was amazed.
I have to admit my initial reaction was, “OMG where you been?” (Techsoup dummy!) Of course I realize that not all generations are so fluent nor even interested in these technologies (though she is the sys admin of this organization) and then realized she was checking out Techsoup and well, that was cool. I agreed with her that this was amazing stuff and had interesting potential. But a generation gap was staring me in the face and I recognized that while I have a significant interest in these technologies and tools and play with them everyday, many non-profits have yet to catch on to the awareness building power of social media. It has a great deal to do with the capacity level and the age of people working in these organizations I believe and it might be an interesting bit of research. Here are some StatsCan charts. The average age of community social workers is higher than other occupations.
Also an interesting note is that the vast majority of workers in this field are female. How does this affect the uptake of new technologies? Does it? What do you think? Just to note my wife is amazingly web savvy and a brilliant researcher.
It is hard to stay on top of what’s going on, hence why there are 100 million blogs all talking about this stuff. So for non-profit stakeholders there is so much to be tapped into that it’s overwhelming and time consuming, which is another reason for lack of uptake.
So the generation gap (or interest engagement gap) between this female non-profit executive and myself isn’t the only one I am faced with. The next generation gap is definitely between me and my daughter’s generation.
if you want to see how this stuff is being used look to the kids. When I watch my 15 year old daughter text two people almost simultaneously while having an in-person conversation with three of her friends in front of a television that they are “apparently” watching, and checking her Facebook wall, and laughing at the latest video post…. I am painfully aware of how easy it can be to fall behind. I use technologies as tools and find them cool. I grew up with rotary phones, black and white television and vinyl 45s…so all this stuff blows my mind.
Teenage girls however are not fascinated with IT, they are IT. They don’t own phones, they are the phones. If you are a teenage girl these days and you don’t have a phone, you are an outcast and will feel the pressure of social isolation. Parents think it’s a good thing to buy kids cell phones because of the security (I did); but the kids want them because that’s their community. To be without one’s cell is to be lost and de-friended. I wonder what kinds of jobs these kids are going to get when they are such incredible multi-taskers and how any employer will manage to hold onto them.
So yeah, I’m sure there a bunch of non-profits that have had success using Twitter to raise funds. I mentioned Timothy Ferriss’s campaign to help schools in my last Twitter post and there are other examples all over the place. But Twitter is not the be all and end all for fund raising and in fact takes a fair bit of thought to make that work. And that’s an exploration for another day.
But one other note…my daughter and her friends don’t use Twitter…a dangerous sign for Twitter!
So have fun and be kind out there.
:-D