The use of Social Media in

the Non-profit sector:

Its challenges and risks

Prima Hadi Putra

School of Information Systems and Technology Management
UNSW Business School
the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Australia

August 2016

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Executive Summary
There should be no distinct differences in how profit organisations and non-profit
organisations utilise technology, but in the reality non-profits often lag behind profit
organisations in term of information system implementation. I am chosen by Dompet Dhuafa,
the largest non-profit organisation in Indonesia regarding public donation received, to take
background research on social media and provide a recommendation its implementation.
This report will identify the emerging use of social media in the non-profit sector, discuss why
Dompet Dhuafa might find it beneficial, determine its risks and ethical perspective, and
presents a comprehensive approach on how non-profits could manage risks more effectively.

The pros of the utilisation of social media by Dompet Dhuafa stand since it benefits the
organisation in term of stakeholder engagement, breeding its accountability and
transparency, and overcoming talent scarcity on the non-profits. Social media is also used in
facilitating disaster risk reduction during several emergency management events in the
country.

There are cons about social media utilisation because of concern over risks to the
sustainability of organisation that needs a new approach on how Dompet Dhuafa could
manage social media risks more effectively. It involves structures and actions several major
streams of effort, including vulnerability assessment; establish and expanding the existing risk
management structure to include social media activity; inaugurate advanced social media
monitoring tools and technology; develop as-is performance management capabilities to
effectively response on the metrics brought from control activities; and establish a more risk-
aware culture by engage in enterprise-wide change management activities.

Although the report focuses primarily on answering Dompet Dhuafa needs, however, the
non-profit sector in general and most other industries could apply the understanding and
recommendation of this report.

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Table of Content
Executive Summary ……………………………………………………………………………………………… iii
Table of Content ………………………………………………………………………………………………….. iv
Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 1
Dompet Dhuafa and the non-profit sector 1
Defining social media 1
The use of social media in the non-profit sector is emerging and many of non-
profits benefiting from it ……………………………………………………………………………………… 2
What is the risk behind the using of social media in the perspective of security
and ethics …………………………………………………………………………………………………………..… 3
Privacy Violations 3
Fraud 4
Loss of Intellectual Property 4
Financial Loss 4
Finally, here are our recommendations ……………………………………………………………….. 4
References …………………………………….……………………………………………………………………… 6
About the author ………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 7
Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………………………………………… 7

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Introduction
Dompet Dhuafa and the non-
profit sector
Dompet Dhuafa, which means wallet for
the poor, initially established in 1992 at
Jakarta, Indonesia. It started as the social
wing of the journalist at Republika daily
who tribute 2.5 percent of their salaries as
their donation to be handed to the poor
they met during the journalistic
assignment. This initiative then
transformed into a non-profit professional
organisation since it successfully
implemented progressive concepts and
programs in its goal to alleviate poverty in
the country.
As the largest philanthropic institutions in
Indonesia regarding donations received,
Dompet Dhuafa was among the
international non-profit organisations
appointed to be a consultative member of
the United Nation’s Economic and Social
Council (ECOSOC). It also recently received
international recognition with the
prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award
2016, a prize given by trustees of the
Rockefeller Brothers Funds for Asian
individual or organisations with excellent
achievement in varied fields.
The non-profit sector often lag behind the
organisations in profit sector in term of
information system implementation. Over
the last two decades of the embrace of
internet technology –including the use
social media, however, many non-profits
gain benefits by empowered to use the
technology to advance social good.
Defining social media
In this report, the definition of social media
would spin around social interaction
during people process of creating, share or
exchange data and ideas virtually. Olaru
(2015, p.184) explores the interaction
process would conquer a significant
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number of players, from various locations,
the velocity of acquiring the message to
target and the constant attainability of
information. It turns communication into
an interactive discussion among
organisations and its stakeholders.
A study (Page et al. 2014, p. 5) define the
term of social media is used to refer to
Internet-based sites and services that
encourage social interaction between
partakers. It involves platforms for data
sharing, including (but not restricted to)
forum of discussion, wikis, blog and
microblogs, social networking sites, search
engines, content sharing sites such as the
audio-sharing sites, Soundcloud; video-
sharing sites, YouTube; or the picture-
sharing sites, Instagram.
Social media is eminent from practices of
conventional mass media, since mass
media such as print newspapers, radio or
television is offered as a one-to-many
broadcasting mechanism. Distinctly, social
media conveys content thru a network of
partakers where it can be published by
everyone crossways possibly huge-scale
audiences.
As Page et al. (2014, p.5) definition
suggests, social media becomes an
umbrella term which gathers an apparently
varied range of systems, with different
types of social media sites and services
which realise this types in particular ways
and diverse range of communication
channels and text types, some of which
can be integrated into the same location.
For example, Facebook is originally a social
network site, but it also allows its members
to set up private profiles and to join public
groups. They are free to post public or
semi-public updates, comments or
rankings seen by a broader audience of a
‘Friend list' or anyone who use the
platform, at the same time send a private
message or chat online with the other
person.
Due to the convergence of media
applications, it is more challenging to
declare unambiguously that particular
service is an example of social media or
not. For example, post in websites can
embed links to social media sites through
the sharing button or have an additional
option for the reader to discuss and
evaluate content through comments and
ratings which sometimes can resemble a
forum. By way of this merging of media
forms on one side and the range of
application on the other, it seems hard to
set out a definitive list of technical features
which could be used to distinguished a
given application as including or excepted
from the set of ‘social media' in a clear-cut
manner. Instead, in this report, I discuss by
setting social media application in the
recent commonly used in the global
context. In respect to the historical
background of social media, Facebook,
Twitter, and Instagram would be the
selected examples of social media platform
during studies.
The use of social media in the
non-profit sector is emerging
and many of non-profits
benefiting from it
Over the last of two decades, social media
has embraced internet technology and
comprised non-profits works. Diverse in
quality and penetration of internet
infrastructure in which country they reside
–which also varying quality and quantity of
users, seems not affecting to bring
dramatic evolutions. As April 2016, over
1.6 billion people are using them with
more than 64% of internet users accessing
social media services online. According to
statistics, the ability of stay in contact with
friends and relatives as well as catching up
with news and other content are the
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favorite reason why online users spend
their time on social media platform.
Social media in non-profit sectors allow
non-profit organisations to improve and
enhance their engagement with donors,
partners, and others stakeholders.
According to the 2016 Global NGO Online
Technology Report, 95% of NGOs
worldwide use Facebook Page; 83% of
them is profiling their present at Twitter
land; and 40% of them share their profile
on Instagram. Besides that, LinkedIn (52%),
YouTube (51%), and Google+ (30%) are
the other leading social media used by
NGOs worldwide (Nonprofit Tech for
Good, 2016)
Like the other figures of non-profits in the
studies, Dompet Dhuafa use these social
media to publish and share information on
what organisation is doing; this helps bred
accountability and transparency as well as
promoting causes, by targeting public
awareness, prospective donors or they
used it to conduct required recruiting staff
and volunteer agenda.
Dompet Dhuafa also advanced the
utilisation of social media in facilitating
disaster risk communication practice
during several catastrophic situations.
During many disaster events such as the
Mt. Sinabung eruptions of February 2014
in Indonesia and Jakarta massive floods of
February 2015 social media is repressed
communication and risk perceptions by
Dompet Dhuafa, government, other non-
profits, affected survivors and the public.
Back to the report, Nonprofit Tech for
Good (2016) also reveals that social media
as the communication tool inspired most
often global donor to give. Rather than
other communication channels -such as
email; websites; mobile text and mass
media, 43% of millennials, 24% of Gen X
and 21% Baby Boomer donors are inspired
to support causes because of their
appearance in social media.
Over 78% of NGOs worldwide agree with
the effectiveness of social media in term of
online fundraising. However, only 32% of
them assigned a dedicated communication
staff for the responsibility of social media
management. Around 11% of them have a
social media manager in full-time or part-
time work arrangement, and 42% rely on
volunteers. While the remaining 42%
assign the responsibility as an embedded
task to development, program,
administrative, and even the c-suite
members.
Shortfalls in managing social media risk is
happen globally. Compared to NGOs in
others continent, NGOs in Asia lays on
below global performance. Only 26% of
NGOs in Asia assigned the responsibility of
social media under a particular
management unit, while NGO in Europe
(39%), North America (33%), South
America (42%), Africa (35%), and Australia
and Oceania (40%).
Dompet Dhuafa’s potentials -having
50.800 Facebook Likes, 115.000 Twitter
Followers, and 20.500 Instagram Followers,
make it lay up the top level NGOs in Asia,
even in the global scale. It is not only
become a potential energy to bring
organisation to the next level of works but
also give birth to potential threats and risk
behind these profiles.
What are the risks behind the
using of social media in the
perspective of security and
ethics
While pros posting a cloud of potential
business advantages, cons arguing the use
of social media can render non-profit to
numerous business risk. Kumari and Sigh
(2015, p.602) contend that privacy and
security are the primary concern of any
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social media platform, since allowing its
users to share the interest, activities, and
real-life connection. Instead of attention to
privacy and security in social media seems
to be balanced with the confidence as
individual responsibility (Tiganoaia, 2015 p.
237), Dompet Dhuafa should protect its
stakeholders and user’s information again
the threats over the internet. Most of the
social media risks are unanticipated by
non-profits because of their softness -
includes ambiguous policies, unclear roles,
inconsistent processes and system
vulnerabilities through data misuse and
data sharing. Some social media risks are
namely beneath.
PRIVACY VIOLATIONS. Privacy is defined
in terms of a person having control over
the extent, timing, and circumstances of
sharing oneself (physically, behaviorally, or
intellectually) with others. McCabe (2004)
argues privacy refers to the right of
individuals to limit access by others to
aspects of their person that can include
thoughts, identifying information, and
even information contained in bodily
tissues and fluids.
Social media sites have experienced
security holes in which private information
was shared publicly. In early 2013, a
software bug in Facebook enabled a
program inadvertently to share six million
user's credentials such as email addresses
and phone numbers. This incident has
made any company using Facebook in
promoting its business publicly shared
their customers’ information (Smith, 2013).
In the practice of finding the anonymous
donation, the non-profit could use “Data
scraping” techniques. This technique is
used when donor credential could be
found by tracking their online activities
and collecting personal data from their use
of social media sites. It seems that data
scraping is a smart movement in regard to
requiring and maintaining connection with
donors, however, like or dislike, this
technique let customer privacy being
violated no matter the reason behind that.
In some cases, it exacerbated when the
scarping activities have been done by third
research party -who then sell the data to
other organisation. Since it seems manner
unethically, non-profit are not encourage
to gather leads of donors in this way.
FRAUD. The noble and kindness motive of
humanity are often misused by hackers
irresponsible users representing
themselves as non-profit organisations.
The ability to spread information goes
‘viral' so quickly is the potential of social
media to perpetrate fraud. Hackers
representing themselves on Twitter as a
non-profit could establish fake causes
during disaster period and raising funds
using private bank account is a common
practice that quite often found.
In another case a hacker misrepresenting a
non-profit has posted fake release with
exceptional financial news, causing and
then profiting from a distrust in non-
profit's credibility.
LOSS OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. The
growth of social media has been making
espionage business activity easier in many
ways. People can misuse data and
information in different ways. First, it can
be abused by individuals both internal the
organisation and external to it; second, it
can be misused or shared accidently or
maliciously.
Let say the fundraiser who establishes
LinkedIn relationships with donors is not
intent to disclose a confidential and highly
valuable donor list, but in effect is doing
so. Employees who make a Facebook
posting or Instagram about exciting work
they are doing may mean no harm;
however, a real business spy might be able
to put some information together to
develop advance information about
program plans that still on R&D stage.
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FINANCIAL LOSS. Users of social media
platforms such as Facebook often send
links to each other –links to videos, news,
donation payment link and so forth- it has
become distressingly easy for hackers and
spies to install rogue software on
computers when a user inadvertently click
a bad link. Such malware can cause a
variety of mischief, including luring people
to the fraudulent transaction or using
hidden software to steal data and personal
information, as well as corporate
information that might be on the
computer.
All of these risks could be worse because
of the absent of dedicated responsibility
takers in managing the risk of social media
activity within the non-profit sector.
Therefore, a dedicated management unit
to deal with social media threats is as
important as social media activities itself.
Finally, here are our
recommendations
For Dompet Dhuafa and other non-profits
looking to progress their social media risk
management capacities can focus on
several key influence points:
1. Vulnerability assessment beyond
just reputational risk, consider to
design social media activity can
expose the non-profit in term of
business, regulation, legal and
market risk.
2. Establish and expanding the
existing risk management
structure to include social media
activity. Dompet Dhuafa should
have a risk of definition tolerance
level and acceptable-use policies as
well as in place sufficient resources
for issue escalation and crisis
management where required.
 Installing a centralised governance
model would result in consistency
in social media policy
interpretation and implementation.
The centralised risk governance
structure would also be a single
point of accountability reference,
so Dompet Dhuafa could ensure
the structure of governance across
organisation lines aware of what
others are doing.
3. Inaugurate advanced social
media monitoring tools and
technology. Having social media
tools and technology would enable
Dompet Dhuafa to (a) collect data
from various social media sources;
(b) analyse unstructured data (such
as information about sentiment of
the customers) to broaden services;
(c) offer insights into organisation’s
overall risk situation; and (d)
measure prospective social media
risk exposure, in regard to the
organisation’s risk appetite.
4. Develop as-is performance
management capabilities to
effective response on the metrics
brought from monitoring
activities. Dompet Dhuafa
capabilities to analyse and act
based on the result of monitoring
may affect the depiction of
organisation’s overall risk. The
focus of measuring risk could be
on defining how well controls are
performing and reveal the
improvement opportunities may
exist for better control in the
future.
5. Establish a more risk-aware
culture by engaging in
enterprise-wide change
management activities. In my
view, the most important (as well
as most challenging) aspect of
managing social media is putting
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controls on cultural awareness and
change. Since the vast impact on
social media risk control only could
happen if expectation and cultural
engagement are properly set,
influential leaders in sponsorship
position should drive awareness
and acceptance of Dompet
Dhuafa's overall monitoring of
social media use. Deliver training
initiatives that use action learning
principles, may guide staff at all
levels of behaviors that are more
likely to shrink overall of social
media risks.
In conclusion, as social media could offer
considerable advantages to Dompet
Dhuafa and most other types of non-profit
sectors, the establishment of a presence in
the most-used social platform is essential.
By assigning specific management unit at
senior level, will enable organisations to
listen what is critical for any non-profits
that want to take social media seriously –
listening to what people say about them. It
is crucial to non-profits being sensitive by
having the ability to analyse what is the
messages, which is saying that, and then to
be able to dig deep information into it,
establishing trusted relationships and
improving the high impact of non-profit
works at the same time.
Inherent in the use of social media are
thoughtful risk – reputational, business,
strategic, regulatory and more. To mitigate
these risk and get more value from a social
media strategy, non-profit need to
institute governance structures, process
and technologies unique to meeting social
media challenges. []
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About the author
Prima Hadi Putra is a postgraduate student
at UNSW Business School, the University of
New South Wales (UNSW) Australia. His
primary research interest lies in the area of
digital empowerment in social
development and digitally enabled
strategic transformation in non-profit
organisations. Prior to entering academia,
he experienced for a decade in not-for-
profit sectors in Indonesia and Australia.

Acknowledgement
The work of Prima Hadi Putra is supported
by the Indonesia Endowment Fund for
Education (Lembaga Pengelola Dana
Pendidikan – LPDP) within the Ministry of
Finance, the Republic of Indonesia. This
report is made as an individual research
assignment of INFS5907 (Security and
Ethics in Cyberspace) course and is to be
presented in both written and oral form at
School of Information System and
Technology Management, UNSW Business
School, the University of New South Wales
(UNSW) Australia.

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©2016
School of Information Systems and Technology Management
UNSW Business School
the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Australia

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