How Nonprofit Leaders Can Use Social Media to Accomplish Their Missions

Leading Across Boundaries: Creating Collaborative Agencies in a Networked World
by Russell M. Linden

Top-down approaches to running nonprofit organizations are not conducive to innovation in a world that is increasingly using social media, writes Russell M. Linden, a management consultant.

Mr. Linden urges nonprofit leaders to learn more about how online social networks can enable new and powerful collaborative efforts. He cites the PeopleFinder project, an online effort between a young man named David Geilhufe and three charities to help people locate friends and relatives in the Gulf Coast when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the area. The San Francisco Symphony used YouTube to assemble a collaborative online orchestra audition, where musicians submitted videos of themselves performing and were chosen through online voting. More than 15 million YouTube users watched the audition videos.

Writes Mr. Linden: “Web 2.0 is chaotic, messy, and makes little sense to those who need top-down control.”

Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 10475 Crosspoint Boulevard, Indianapolis, Ind. 46256; (800) 762-2974; http://www.josseybass.com; 317 pages; $40.00; ISBN 978-0-470-39677-3.