Vanity metrics of Haus of Codec (by Leslie Rodriques)
It's important to know and understand your audience when using social media for a non-profit purpose. Reaching your target demographic and gaining donors is essential to a non-profit's success, and in order to understand what is working, you need data directly from that audience. This is why learning how to effectively use social media to benefit your cause should be a priority for any non-profit looking to maintain and grow into the future.
For example, there's a local organization in Providence, Rhode Island called Haus of Codec that serves the LGBT youth population with housing needs and resources. Currently, their following on Instagram and Facebook consists of fellow LGBT community members, drag performers, and other local queer friendly businesses. They currently have 1.7k followers on Facebook, but only 750 followers on Instagram and only 335 followers on X. This shows a priority for Facebook promotion, but this organization could reach more of their target demographic if they were consistent in posting on other platforms as well. They do have a Tiktok account, but it only has one follower, and no videos posted.
My recommendation would be that they should prioritize their Tiktok account. Tiktok is wildly popular with the younger generation and is the app with the highest average watch time on any video app in the US. According to an article about tiktok demographics, 1 in 4 Tiktok users are under 25 years of age. This one move could easily place their content in the hands of their exact target, and I feel that they are truly missing opportunities for expansion, connection and access to sponsers outside of the local area.
It's important that they also remain consistent with the apps they already use. Consistency is important for the algorithm to understand your content and push it to the correct place. I would suggest that they post more content about the community they're actually helping, vlog interviews with folks who have benefitted from their resources, make vlogs about a day in the life of an event they're setting up for, and post high quality photos of the people behind the scenes to really familiarize the audience and create connection. They should be taking advantage of the Reels function as well because Instagram prioritizes those types of posts.
