The 80-page study examines how non-profit fundraisers, particularly colleges, but also museums, charities and others, use LinkedIn to locate and communicate with potential donors, and to generally advance the interests of their organizations. The study helps its readers to answer questions such as: how is LinkedIn used as a fundraising tool? Do fundraisers use LinkedIn paid ads? If so, how much do they spend? Which kind of ads do they use? What kind of LinkedIn accounts do they maintain? Do they use LinkedIn Groups? How? How many followers do they have on LinkedIn? What kind of LinkedIn search functions do they use and what are their future plans for use of LinkedIn? Data is broken out by size and type of institution for easier benchmarking.
Just a few of the report’s many findings are that:
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Overall 68.42% of organizations surveyed had their own LinkedIn accounts while 31.58% used the personal accounts of staff members.
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30% of college fundraisers in the sample have used LinkedIn paid ads.
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Close to 54% of organizations with more than 9 fundraisers on staff participated in a LinkedIn Group.
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Organizations that had a premium account were much more likely than others to use visual materials in their LinkedIn updates.