Is Reddit an Online Community for your Nonprofit?

It seems as though a new social network is pops up every day. Finding the right one for your nonprofit can be critical to reaching to the right community for your mission.

Reddit Sticker

We’ve talked about how your social media strategy starts with your website. After you’ve spent some time to establish your site, sharing your content is the next step. Let’s take a look at Reddit and how it might be the place for your organization.

What is Reddit?
Reddit is known as “the front page of the internet”. It lists links in order of popularity for users. Users can then upvote or downvote the link moving it up or down the page for the rest of the viewers. Users can also comment on the link. Reddit is known as a place for discussion and reading the comments can sometimes give a person more information than the link originally posted.

What makes Reddit a little different than just a list of links, is the fact that they allow users to create their own communities known as subreddits. Subreddits are lists of links that are associated with a certain topic. Topics range from TVshows to political parties to geographic locations.

How can my nonprofit use Reddit?
Reddit is a great place to share content from your organization’s website. By posting links to your site in the appropriate subreddits you might be able to expose your work to a different community and gain more support for your mission. The key here is to post in multiple subreddits to see which place ends up being the right place for you. When posting make sure to read the rules posted on side bar on the right side of the page. Different subreddits have different rules.

You can start and moderate your own subreddit. If your organization needs to inform people about your mission, reddit is a great place to do so. Not only could you post content from your site, but you can link to news articles related to your mission to generate discussion.

The Reddit community is also known for being able to raise money for charities in a short amount of time. Remember that story Erik shared about a bus monitor who was bullied? The fundraising efforts behind that story happened on Reddit. Reddit was also a major tool used by Stephen Colbert to raise money for Donors Choose. Reddit users are responsible for a lot of good. There is even redditdonate.com where redditors can donate, and subreddit moderators and nonprofit organizations can create campaigns.

The Reddit community also participates in meetups and days of service. If you can get your organization involved in one of those that could me a number of new volunteers for your agency.

The internet is a big place. Finding the right spot for your organization might take some time, but once you find it you’ll be set. Maybe Reddit is the place for you.

Are you an organization that has used Reddit in the past or are currently active reddit users? What works best with this community? I’d love to talk about it more in comments!

5 comments

  1. Marissa …. I’ve been banned from the Reddit nonprofit subgroup and have no idea why. I looked at the groups rules and couldn’t figure it out. Is there someplace someone can ask the Reddit Gods to explain? Is there an appeals process? Just curious.

    ~Erik

    1. Hi Erik! Sorry to hear that you’ve been banned from the r/nonprofit subreddit! When this happens the best course of action is to follow up with the moderators of the group. They will be listed in the sidebar on the right-hand side of the screen. Right above the box that says “moderators” should be a link that says “message the moderators”. Doing so will bring up a screen that will allow you to send them a quick message. Hope this helps and allows you to clarify what happened and be active on r/nonprofit again!

      1. Marissa . . . I did as you suggested, but no one responded. However, I decided to attempt posting my blog on Reddit today and I am apparently not banned anymore. Huh, I feel like George Bailey with a second chance at life on Reddit.

        I know you’re a big fan of Reddit, but I am not so much. It feels a bit like “amateur hour” over there.

        1. Erik, sorry to hear that the moderators of r/nonprofit didn’t answer you, but congrats on your second chance at conquering the internet!!

          I completely understand how Reddit could seem a bit amateur over there. It is a mainly volunteer user moderated community. Some subreddits are maintained better than others. I still think there is value in the discussion and charitable efforts that have come through the site. Reddit is definitely a unique community that may or may not be a place to share content based on your audience.

          1. Marissa . . . I finally got my response from Reddit. This is what they said:

            “Erik, all your links are to your own [blog] website, which constitutes spam. An occasional self post is fine but the majority of your submissions shouldn’t be your own content.”

            I guess I need to re-think how I use Reddit because I don’t want to be a spammer. Yuck! I am sharing this here because I bet others are doing the same thing with their content.

Leave a Reply to donordreams Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.