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In this paper, we seek to understand civic engagement by nonprofit foundations through social media. Broadly, civic engagement refers to citizen participation in their communities with the purpose of improving the community (Adler and Goggin, 2005; Carboni, McNeely, & Maxwell, 2015). Although civic engagement is often applied to political participation, the term also relates to individual and collective action through civil society. Civil society includes the institutions and organizations that individuals voluntarily associate with to advance common interests (Anheier 2005; Skocpol & Fiorina 1999). Civil society is distinct from government and business and includes nonprofit organizations.
In the United States, nonprofit foundations are an important vehicle for civic engagement as they provide organizational mechanisms for individuals to improve communities. Nonprofit foundations typically provide grant funding to nonprofits, individuals and communities for scientific, educational, cultural, religious, or other charitable purposes. Foundations act as intermediaries, funding nonprofits in tandem or independently of government (Riely & Kraft, 2010). Although most are not in formal relationships with government, foundations often serve an agenda-setting role in targeting social problems and proposing solutions for ameliorating community and larger social ills (Duan-Barnett, Wangelin, & Lamm, 2012).
Increasingly foundations use social media to engage with citizens and other stakeholders. While some literature exists on social media usage among nonprofits generally and foundations specifically, there is limited evidence about how online stakeholders engage with nonprofit social media. Online stakeholders are those who converse via social media with organizations. They may or may not be active in additional organizational activities. We view social media as a tool for relationship management that may facilitate civic engagement with online stakeholders. We ask: Are foundations simply posting information on social media sites such as Facebook, or is there a conversation taking place between the organization and its stakeholders? Engagement via social media sites such as Facebook is defined differently from use in this context. Simply having a social media site does not mean users or stakeholders are actively engaged with the organization that manages the social media platform. Are foundations’ stakeholders responding to foundation Facebook posts? Are they civically engaged in an online conversation about their communities?
We study high asset corporate, non-corporate-private, and community foundations to determine how foundations use social media to engage online stakeholder citizens. While all foundations serve charitable purposes, corporate and non-corporate, or private foundations are typically funded by an endowment or principal fund, often with a single source. Conversely, community foundations are nonprofit organizations with public charity status that receive funding from numerous sources. To maintain public charity status, they must seek funds from diverse sources. We hypothesize that community foundations will be more likely to promote online civic engagement through social media than their corporate and private counterparts because of the need to secure diverse streams of funding. We also predict that online stakeholders will be more engaged with community foundation social media than with corporate or private foundations.