Highlights of LinkedIn’s new program for nonprofits

Bryan Breckenridge, head of LinkedIn Nonprofit Solutions, with Salem Kimble of Better World Telecom at last month’s Social Media for Nonprofits conference in San Francisco.

LinkedIn Nonprofit Solutions offers mix of free resources & paid packages

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, foundations, cause organizations, companies, brands, start-ups, citizen publications. This is the first of a two-part series. Also see:

• Part 2: Nonprofit strategies for getting more out of LinkedIn

On March 22, LinkedIn announced it had surpassed 100 million users, growing at two new members per second. However, more importantly, LinkedIn has 3.6 million individual members who identify as employees or board members of a nonprofit. More than 1,000 nonprofit organizations have established a company page, and there are 76,000 nonprofit groups on LinkedIn.

Given that, it’s great news to hear that Linkedin is putting more resources into supporting nonprofit professionals and organizations. On May 9, the company launched LinkedIn Nonprofit Solutions under its LinkedIn for Good brand.

LinkedIn brought on Bryan Breckenridge, former director of nonprofits and education at the Salesforce.com Foundation, to head up the new program, and I spoke with him about what’s in store for nonprofits.

The company has begun taking the steps to address nonprofits’ needs but will be doing a lot more, he says. For starters, LinkedIn has opened a learning center page for nonprofits with great pointers, ideas and resources for maximizing a nonprofit’s presence on the site.The learning center specifically offers examples and best practices about how nonprofit professionals and nonprofit organizations can take advantage of LinkedIn.

Three packages aimed at providing solutions to nonprofits

Discounted recruiting solutions is a core part of the new LinkedIn Nonprofit Solutions. Bryan says this year they will aggressively discount the price of three primary LinkedIn Recruiting Solutions products for nonprofits, starting as low as $400 per month (which is still a lot for smaller nonprofits):

• LinkedIn Recruiter
• Jobs Network/Job Slots
• Career Pages

LinkedIn Recruiting Solutions can help nonprofits differentiate themselves and recruit the right staff members, volunteers and board members to accomplish their missions. Visit the learning center and click on the “contact us” button if you want more information about these products.

This is great news for nonprofit organizations that want to take advantage of the power of Linkedin’s network. For example, a simple search for “volunteer manager” turned up in 287,985 member profiles within LinkedIn Recruiter. Linkedin also foresees a formalization and globalization of its program at the start of 2012.

Asking for input from the nonprofit community

Bryan and his colleague Connie Chan Wang (manager of social media, employment brand & community whom I met last month at the National Conference on Volunteering and service) are also asking for input into how LinkedIn can help nonprofits do their jobs better.

Bryan has been part of a great discussion about this topic in NTEN’s Linkedin Group. Within the group, he asks: “PLEASE help me understand the challenges you’re facing from a talent acquisition perspective. How does you organization source and recruit: full-time staff, skilled volunteers, board members? Beyond our free offerings, this is where our discounting and educational effort will be focused for organizations.”

I applaud the openness that LinkedIn offers by aggressively asking nonprofits for their ideas and input – and listening. I look forward to watching how Linkedin for Good and Linkedin Nonprofit Solutions evolve over the coming year. In the meantime, if you have ideas about how LinkedIn can help your nonprofit, I’m sure Bryan and Linkedin will be following the comments below this post. Please add your thoughts!

Also see Part 2: Nonprofit strategies for getting more out of LinkedIn

LinkedIn image courtesy of Nan Palmero (Creative Commons)

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