That’s an interesting premise. I agree that lots of new social media & enterprise2.0 tools lower the cost barrier to communication. I think you’re saying that this implies that thousands of small charities will therefore be able to carve for themselves niche donor bases out of this space. But what’s to stop major charities dominating this new space as well? They may lack the agility to be *first* into a new comms/fundraising space, but by bureacratic inertia or strategic design, this trailing-edge strategy can see what’s working and only then direct their significant resources into it. Maybe people will want to feel a conversational connectivity with a hyperlocal charity they feel a sense of authenic connectivity to. But maybe many people will instead want to use twitter etc to connect more personally with marquee agencies / brands (eg Save The Children). So long as these agencies are awake to this — and with the resources to have entire digital strategy / digital comms / digital fundraising teams, you would think this will be the case — I’m not so sure that new social media is a recipe for diversity in the third sector, if it parallels what’s going on in the ‘long tail’ elsewhere. We may see an excluded valley in the middle, where microcharities thrive, but mega charities outcompete the attention and funding of middle sized organisations.

There’s also new research out there from Harvard that while the internet has indeed allowed a “long tail” of inventory, that it does not necessarily follow that a strategy targeting consumers of/in the long tail is profitable. Which charity fundraising clearly needs to be!

http://www.breakitdownblog.com/long-tail-theory-under-fire-not-profitable-after-all/

Thoughts?