Giving Compass' Take:

• Rodney Laws explains how Instagram is becoming a platform that can galvanize social change efforts around specific issues, making it a useful tool for philanthropy. 

• Are you utilizing social media for activism? How else can philanthropy benefit from other channels? 

• Learn about family philanthropy and social media. 

Judging from media coverage and online conversations, it's clear we're living in a time of heightened social consciousness ("wokeness"). Whether that sentiment is driven by genuine concern for the fate of the planet and the welfare of others or a simple desire to be part of a collective is unimportant: people being willing to live less selfishly is a good thing.

That said, changing attitudes and ways of seeing the world don't automatically translate into economic or cultural impact. If we hope to drive meaningful action and change the world, this emerging way of seeing things needs to be broadened, deepened, and communicated as widely as possible. And the key to all that is social media.

When you strike the right tone and activate the right influencers, social media can transform a disparate group of strangers into a unified force for good. And if you were asked to pick one social media platform to focus your organization's resources on, it would have to be Instagram. While the image-friendly platform doesn't have the broad reach of Facebook, it's a powerful platform in its own right and has been growing in popularity, especially among millennials and their younger siblings.

Intrigued? Here are some things to keep in mind as your organization starts to think about using  Instagram to bolster its social-change efforts:

  • Images drive emotion.
  • Community = donations. In recent years, however, we've seen crowdsourcing emerge as a an important fundraising tool — and a way to bring lots of geographically dispersed individuals together to change things for the better.
  • Live video can humanize your supporters. Thanks to Instagram Live (live streaming on the platform) and IGTV (an associated app that allows you to save hour-long videos to the platform), Instagram has become a useful tool for the production and distribution of live video, which  can go a long way in terms of communicating authenticity.

Read the full article about how philanthropy can benefit from Instagram by Rodney Laws at PhilanTopic.