A Case Study of a Rural Appalachian Nonprofit and Its Replicable Strategies to Communicate with Stakeholders

Abstract

Although nonprofit organizations, generally, have made successful use of social media as a way of communicating with participants or clients, volunteers, communities (Waters, 2010) and donors (Nah & Saxton, 2012), incorporating social media presents a dilemma for rural nonprofit organizations. Time, funding, knowledge, human resources, and policies of an organization all play a factor in deciding which types of social media platforms are used for engagement (Hou & Lampe, 2018). This qualitative case study examined a rural nonprofit organization serving the health and wellbeing needs of residents in what was once coal country in Appalachia. Findings may be relevant to other nonprofit organizations as leaders decide whether, and how, to use social media and other forms of internet communications to reach stakeholders. This study examines the intrinsic stakeholder commitment model of stakeholder theory and diffusion of innovation theory to explore the spread of the use of social media and factors that may play a role in its adoption by NPOs.