LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional social network, connecting a staggering 300 million members worldwide.
A common misconception about the platform is that it’s sheerly the domain of corporations, head-hunters and the professionally driven, all of which seem at odds with nonprofit mojo.
In fact, the platform can serve as a fantastic tool for both individuals and nonprofits to forge important connections, share strategies, inspire and empower.
Why Join
Professional Presence. This is a biggie and why every nonprofit should, at minimum, establish a profile on LinkedIn. It simply doesn’t look good for your staff members with LinkedIn profiles to list you as an employer without having an officially branded page to link to. Are you even a real organization? Are you stuck in 1995? People will wonder.
Connecting and Sharing. Beyond the mere establishment of your nonprofit as a legit, trustworthy organization, LinkedIn has proven to be a strategically brilliant platform for organizations that:
- Work with professionals in a specific field
- Coordinate groups with strong shared interests
- Produce a large volume of quality content with broad appeal (news, resources, updates)
- Boast an influential and well-networked CEO who is already active on LinkedIn and can use those connections to elevate the organization.
LinkedIn provides an opportunity to build relationships with possible partners, participate in the exchange of ideas on topics most dear to your organization's heart, and establish yourself as a leader in your field.
Other Advantages
Millennials. Millennial generation professionals – a group that tends to be high energy, visionary and in search of meaningful work – abound on LinkedIn. College students and college graduates are the fastest growing membership demographic on LinkedIn (39 million and climbing), making the platform an increasingly great place to recruit, inspire and plant seeds for the future.
Homepage Traffic. Though other platforms may shunt traffic to various features on your website, no other social network drives visitors to your organization’s homepage like LinkedIn. We're talking by a huge margin—LinkedIn homepage directs are quadruple that of Twitter and Facebook.
Want a little LinkedIn scratching post to sharpen your claws? Read our LinkedIn Best Practices guide.
Ready to sign-up? Follow this walk-through.