Tuesday, January 13th, 2009...11:15 am
Facebook: All Your Donors Belong to Us
I was talking to someone about the growing importance of Facebook to fundraising, but was pulled up short by the following comment:
But Facebook users are all 20-somethings. Our supporters are all in their 40s and 50s. We have an older audience – they wouldn’t know how to use Facebook!
Not true, according to the latest stats. Facebook isn’t just grabbing the youth demographic, it’s gobbling up the baby boomers as well.
First, keep in mind that Facebook became the world’s largest social network about 6 months ago, with about 150 million active users.
Second, the demographics of Facebook are changing fast. According to istrategylabs.com , in the U.S. alone the 35-54 year old segment grew an astounding 276% in the last 6 months. That means this group has roughly doubled in size every 2 months. As of right now, there are about 7 million of these greying hipsters online across the United States.
Of course, my naysaying friend was still sort of right about Facebook being a young person’s game: In the U.S., 18-24 year old still make up the bulk of Facebook users, forming about 40% of the total population. But you know what? In Canada, the gap is much smaller: we have about 3.6 million youngsters (18-24), compared to 2.3 million boomers (35-54.) In Canada, our grown-ups are cooler.
So things are changing fast. For a non-profit, this is further proof that social networks are going to play a bigger role in the near future: it’s a huge audience, and it’s your audience.
ps. If you’re a numbers geek like me, you can get your own data straight from Facebook. It’s a little clunky, but by using the process for placing an ad in Facebook you can extract demographic stats that, presumably, are drawn live from their own system. Try it out…
Also check out Comscore for more stats…
3 Comments
January 14th, 2009 at 2:40 am
Aside from the fact that it’s a little too much of a generalisation to suggest older people can’t use computers (tell that to my mother who’s writing HTML at 60+), there’s also a huge missed opportunity in suggesting that just because the established demographic is different from what you’re used to, that means you shouldn’t be there.
One of the crucial reasons for being in the social networking space is to attract the attention and support of people who might otherwise not be on your usual mailing lists or part of your established target audience. On top of that, it’s reaching them in a way that is becoming as ordinary as post to them. Our general demographic is 50+, but among our 30,000+ Facebook ‘fans’ (I prefer to think of them as supporters or partners) the dominant group is in their 30s, which means we’re reaching people we might not otherwise have much meaningful communication with.
It won’t be time to give up the traditional fundraising, marketing and general communications methods for a long while yet (if ever). But there’s certainly room for stretching horizons – and just maybe capturing the attention of people who will get older!
January 14th, 2009 at 10:26 am
Hi, Alex.
Good point – I was reading today about the idea of “digital natives” vs. “digital immigrants”: digital natives are the teens who have grown up with social media, and will interact with technology in a way that nobody else can. But knowing a few “grandpa hackers,” I’m not sure I buy this idea either.
I think your differentiation between supporters (on Facebook) and donors is an interesting one. Perhaps we’re just starting to slice up the demographic pie differently…
January 14th, 2009 at 11:45 am
I think that the boomers are coming into the social media age. We are starting to see ways of keeping in touch or fundraising by using sites like Facebook. It will be interesting at the end of the year to revisit those stats to see how or if they change.
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