For the past few months the staff at Headwaters has been thinking a lot about how social media tools fit into our charge of being a transparent grantmaker. Tools like blogs, facebook, Twitter can start an effective two way dialog where the foundation and our various constituencies (grantees, donors, community organizers, and interested individuals) can exchange information and together build effective movements for social change or social media tools can be an amazing time suck that alienates your audience and undermines your brand.Yikes, nothing like a little pressure to help clarify your communications strategy. We’ve been taking the slow and steady approach to social media (not usually my style but it works in this case). Instead of throwing out a bunch of content and hoping something sticks, we are organically growing our Facebook friends and inviting them to our events, twittering program updates, and actively searching for content that will be useful for our audience.

What nonprofits are at the cutting edge of social media and what do you like about their content or strategy?

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