I like Facebook. Mostly to stay in touch with close friends. It’s great for that. I don’t play Farmville or Mafia Wars. I don’t invite people to Causes. But I am a fan of my favorite nonprofits on Facebook. I do see their status updates. I do occasionally give thumbs up, and sometimes I’ll even comment. I have donated to nonprofits that I have seen on Facebook (on their website). Yes. I do like Facebook and I like nonprofits on Facebook.

But I must confess that I sometimes think that Facebook is overrated as a communications and community-building tool. Nonprofits with national and international name recognition do great on Facebook in terms of growing a large fan base, but many small to medium-sized nonprofits struggle to achieve the elusive Facebook ROI (Return on Investment) – website traffic, new e-mail newsletter subscribers, mobile subscribers, online donors, thumbs up and comments i.e, community engagement, etc.

I created and manage the Nonprofit Organization Facebook Page. Compared to Twitter and MySpace, it’s been a much more difficult community to grow and engage. That would be fine if the ROI was there, but even with over 7,000 fans ROI-as-defined-above is elusive. I get little to no website or blog traffic from Facebook (most comes from Twitter and LinkedIn). Very few new e-mail newsletter subscribers. And when I poll my webinar attendees about where they first heard about the webinar… the results are always the same: 1) Referral from friend 2) My Blog 3) My e-mail newsletter 4) Twitter 5) Other 6) Facebook.

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