LinkedIn is the world’s largest online professional network, with more than 347 million members across 200 countries. More than six million of these members are from Australia, and more than one million from New Zealand.

Along with an extensive member base, membership is growing steadily at more than two new members per second and more than 172,000 sign-ups per day. These are impressive numbers, but how important is LinkedIn and its audience base for not-for-profit (NFP) organisations?

Recruiting board members

With the growing number of professionals joining LinkedIn, there are more potential board members to be found online. LinkedIn recently surveyed members with professional experience and a staggering 78 per cent stated that they want to join an NFP board.

So how could an NFP find one of these 78 per cent who might have the desired skill set or background? Using advanced searching capabilities on LinkedIn it’s possible to target specifics; such as someone with accounting experience and who graduated from a particular university. In addition, LinkedIn provides the opportunity to search for “Non-profit interests” which is a feature on all individual profiles. Using this filter of non-profit interests in addition to professional background, it’s easy to compile a shortlist of potential board member candidates.

Another option for board member recruitment is to use the job postings feature, which can be done for a small fee (around $50). This allows direct targeting of potential board members who are active on LinkedIn instead of waiting for them to personally seek out opportunities via created searches.

Finding new staff

The job postings feature and advanced searching capabilities can be an effective way of finding new staff members. The job postings do come at a fee, but one that would be comparable to posting on websites like www.seek.com.au The difference is that these jobs are connected to LinkedIn company pages and these pages already have a following of people who are interested in that organisation or sector.

Job postings are searchable by candidates, but also appear to active users of the site who are targeted by their interests and experiences which are relevant to the ad. This provides an opportunity to find great new talent and potential new staff members who might not necessarily have been looking for a position.

As mentioned in relation to board members, advanced search options can help drill down to skill sets, interests, location and backgrounds. Premium (paid) members of LinkedIn also get access to a wider search, extra filters, automated search alerts and have access to potential candidates’ full profiles. These same premium members can message targets directly with allocated ‘InMail’ each month, an additional service enabling members to send messages to people they aren’t officially connecting to
on LinkedIn.

Sourcing skilled volunteers

Volunteer postings on LinkedIn come at a 90 per cent discount compared to the cost of job postings. This represents a great opportunity to target skilled and active professionals. As with many of the tools mentioned in board recruiting and finding new staff, you can also actively search for people with the right skill set. A requirement to post volunteer positions is to have a company page for your organisation, which is outlined next.

Informative company page

A company page on LinkedIn provides NFPs with the opportunity to publish background information and tell the organisation’s story through text, video and picture updates.

These updates appear to company page followers in their LinkedIn home page feed. These updates may seem similar to those on Facebook, but LinkedIn updates have not been subject to the same algorithms that influence which followers can see updates. Another difference between LinkedIn and Facebook is that the LinkedIn audience is there for professional networking and career opportunities, not just for social interaction.

A visitor to your Company Page will also see contextual information about their connections to your organisation, such as how many of your staff or Board they are connected to, and whether they be first or second-degree connections. This could be utilised for key networking and partnerships, and doing background research on the team.

The professional network represents a major opportunity to improve NFP organisations through sourcing the best talent at all levels of the organisation and growing a professional following for the organisation.

Click here for more information on specific not-for-profit LinkedIn campaigns.