How to turn lurkers into donors? A study of online social support interactions between nonprofit organizations and their
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How to turn lurkers into donors? A study of online social support interactions between nonprofit organizations and their followers Cheng Hong 1
& Cong
Li 2
Received: 12 April 2020 / Accepted: 1 August 2020/ # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract An increasing number of nonprofits are interacting with their current and prospective donors on social media. How to elicit donations effectively through social media, however, remains under-researched. This study applied the optimal matching theory to examine online interactions between nonprofit organizations and their followers. A 2 (valence of organizational post: positive vs. negative) × 2 (type of social support: emotional vs. informational) between-subjects experiment was conducted to investigate how the match between a nonprofit organization’s need and its followers’ social support impacts third-party observers’ perceived relationship satisfaction and donation intention. The mediation effect of enacted social support evaluation (i.e., perceived helpfulness, supportiveness, and sensitiveness) was also examined. It was found that organizational post valence exerted an indirect effect on third-party observers’ perceived relationship satisfaction and donation intention through perceived supportiveness and helpfulness. These mediation effects were conditional on the type of social support provided by online followers of the organization. Keywords Social support . Optimal matching theory . Online fundraising . Donation .
Nonprofit . Social media
* Cheng Hong [email protected] Cong Li [email protected]
1
Department of Communication Studies, California State University, Sacramento, 6000 J Street, Sacramento, CA 95819, USA
2
School of Communication, University of Miami, 5100 Brunson Drive, Coral Gables, FL 33146, USA
C. Hong, C. Li
1 Introduction The rapid development of Internet technologies has enabled nonprofit organizations to recruit donors and elicit donations on social networking sites (SNSs) (Lovejoy and Saxton 2012; Waters et al. 2009). According to a global nonprofit report, about half of the 5352 surveyed nonprofit organizations rated social media as the most frequently used tool to inspire online donations (Nonprofit tech for good 2018). Another report shows that millennials, generation Xers, and baby boomers all utilize social media to stay updated when making donation decisions (NP Source 2018). In addition, statistics reveal that in 2018, followers of nonprofit organizations increased by 34% on Instagram, 26% on Twitter, and 6% on Facebook (M + R Benchmarks 2019), signaling an enlarged base of potential online donors. Therefore, it is important for nonprofit organizations to effectively manage their presence on social media platforms and to cultivate healthy relationships with prospective donors. On social media, a nonprofit organization often communicates with the public by disseminating information about its activities, vision, finances, policies, and ethical standards (Lovejoy and Saxton 2012). The tone of such infor
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