Social Networks for Networked Nonprofits

The information in the reading from chapter 3 focuses primarily on defining social networks and how they pertain to/make up a networked nonprofit organization. According to the book, the main social networks of focus are:

• Personal (family, friends, neighbors, congregants, hobbyists)
• Professional (colleagues, individuals who work at collegial agencies, funders, government agencies, associations, etc.)
• Self-organized (Facebook friends, Twitter followers, etc.)
• Networks of People (created by specific nonprofit organizations: members chosen from databases and are connected via online social networks, websites, etc.)

Prior to reading this chapter, I was not fully aware of the different dynamics of social networks. I think it is much easier to understand when applied to a real-life situation, so I compared the factors that make up social networks (nodes and ties) to the building blocks of our class projects with Safe Harbor.

• Hubs: "The larger nodes within networks; the people or organizations that have lots of connections." Aka: Julie and the rest of the staff at Safe Harbor. Each staff member would be able to help us out with establishing connections in the upstate to sponsor or support our projects/events. They also have provided us with a plethora of information and educational materials to use at events.
• Core: "the inner cluster of people who do most of the work on any project or effort." Aka: each particular group that is planning and executing a project. There was the Homecoming group, the Guest Speaker group, and now the remaining groups' projects to be carried out over the course of the rest of the semester.
• Clusters: "groups of people who are connected to one another, but who have few connections to the rest of the network." An example of a cluster that comes to my mind would be the different individuals working in the College of Architecture, Art & Humanities that all aided in spreading the word about our Homecoming project. There were a number of individuals within that college that worked to get our press release out, and include information about the event on the college's website. They would be considered colleagues because they probably all work somewhat closely together on a day to day basis. However, they are not particularly close with our class. They just aided in our project process.

I think by understanding each of these factors in a way that relates to our class projects, we can more clearly understand how vital they are to impacting the success of our endeavors.