How Social Media are Changing Nonprofit Advocacy: Evidence from the Crowdfunding Platform in Taiwan

How nonprofit organizations (NPO) utilize social media to engage in advocacy work is regarded as one of the most important challenges in the digital economy era. However, although current studies pay their attention to how NPO react to the prevalence of social media, less focus is paid on how social media help to shape NPO’s practices on advocacy work. To help close the gap between theory and practice, this research explores whether the alignment between NPO’s advocacy practices and features of social media determine the NPO’s usage on social media. In particular, how the crowdfunding platform, an emerging and powerful form of social media, is used by NPO is investigated. Those crowdfunding projects initiated by NPO in FlyingV, the most well-known crowdfunding platform in Taiwan, are taken as the data source for analysis in this paper. The findings reveal that crowdfunding platforms are beneficial to NPO in turns of gaining resources and attracting participants, which then fostering the realization of advocacy activities. As well, the efficiency of crowdfunded projects (or advocacy proposals) is mainly determined by the number of participants (or sponsors). However, based on the findings, it is argued that NPO so far have not realized the power of crowdfunding platforms, thus not yet regarding crowdfunding platforms as key social media or strategic weapons in strengthening their impact or contribution on advocacy work relevant to their missions.