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Thursday, February 02, 2006

Analysis of Nonprofit Blogs

In a recent post on Netsquared, I mentioned some tags that could be used in the nonprofit sector. I then decided to search blogs to see how often these terms have been used in blogs.

I used Blogpulse to see the trends of these terms over the last 6 months. I analyzed 28 terms and created 12 different graphs. I used 2-3 similiar terms for each graph. I saved a screenshot of each graph and uploaded the image to Flickr. For each term, I figured out the lowest percentage and highest percentage of all blog posts containing the term.

Listed below are the terms I used, how I grouped them, the link to the graph image, and link to Blogpulse 6 month trend url:


  1. activism (0.011%- 0.076%) , advocacy (0.014%- 0.056%), advocate (0.042%- 0.117%)
    graph and
    6 month trend on Blogpulse
  2. activist (0.037%- 0.149%) and activists (0.025%- 0.103%)
    graph and 6 month trend on Blogpulse
  3. charitable (0.021% - 0.12%), charities (0.021% - 0.304%), and charity (0.1% - 0.403%)
    graph and 6 month trend on Blogpulse
  4. donate (0.079% -1.052%) , donation (0.059% -0.046%) , and donations (0.075% -0.611%)
    graph and 6 month trend on Blogpulse
  5. donor (0.021% -0.166% ) and donors (0.014% -0.046% )
    graph and 6 month trend on Blogpulse
  6. foundation (0.166% -0.334%) and foundations (0.023% -0.072%)
    graph and 6 month trend on Blogpulse
  7. ngo (0.018% - 0.051%) and ngos (0.003% - 0.012%)
    graph and 6 month trend on Blogpulse
  8. non-profit (0.02% - 0.09%) and non-profits (0% -0.01%)
    graph and 6 month trend on Blogpulse
  9. nonprofit (0.012% -0.056%) and nonprofits (0.001% -0.009%)
    graph and 6 month trend on Blogpulse
  10. npo (0.001% -0.011%) and npos (0% -0.001%)
    graph and 6 month trend on Blogpulse
  11. philanthropic (0.002% -0.022%) and philanthropy (0.002% -0.016%)
    graph and 6 month trend on Blogpulse
  12. volunteer (0.069% -0.356%) , volunteering (0.02% -0.101%) , and volunteers (0.046% -0.253%)
    graph and 6 month trend on Blogpulse

Graph Interpretations:

  1. In group one, I noticed advocate was written about the most out of these three terms. Advocacy and activism were mentioned the most in blog entries during between December 9th-27th. I will keep these three terms in my list of terms to analyze.
  2. In group two, both activist and activists were mentioned in blogs about the same. I also noticed that activist was mentioned the most between December 9th-27th. I will keep both these terms in my list of terms to analyze.
  3. In group three, I noticed charity was written about the most out of these three terms. All three terms (charity, charities, and charitable) were mentioned the most between August 23rd and September 10th, which was around the time of the hurricanes. I will keep all three terms in my list of terms to analyze.
  4. In group four, I noticed all three terms were mentioned in blogs about the same. Each term (donate, donation, donations) was written about the most between August 23rd and September 10th. Again, this was around the time of the hurricanes. During that time donate was mentioned the most. I will keep these three terms in my list of terms to analyze.
  5. In group five, I noticed both donor and donors were mentioned in blogs about the same. They both were written about the most between November 21st and December 9th. During that time donor was was mentioned the most. I will keep both of these terms in my list of terms to analyze.
  6. In group six, foundation was mentioned the most. For my list of terms to analyze, I will keep foundation in my list but will remove foundations.
  7. In group seven, ngo was mentioned the most. For my list of terms to analyze, I will keep ngo in my list but will remove ngos.
  8. In group eight, non-profit was mentioned the most. For my list of terms to analyze, I will keep non-profit in my list but will remove non-profits.
  9. In group nine, nonprofit was mentioned the most. For my list of terms to analyze, I will keep nonprofit in my list but will remove nonprofits.
  10. In group ten, npo was mentioned the most. For my list of terms to analyze, I will keep npo in my list but will remove npos.

  11. In group eleven, both terms (philanthropy and philanthropic) were mentioned in blogs about the same. I will keep both of these terms in my list of terms to analyze.

  12. In group twelve, volunteer was mentioned the most in blogs. Volunteers was mentioned the most after volunteer, and volunteering was mentioned the least out of these terms. Each term was written about the most during August 23 and September 10th, which was around the time of the hurricanes. This graph is very interesting. The lines do not intersect all. I I will keep both of these terms in my list of terms to analyze

Overall Results:

From this analysis I found out that these non-profit related terms were less than 1% of all blogs in the blogosphere. The only term that reached 1% was donate.

In conclusion, I have decided that there needs to be more non-profit related blogs and blog entries.

I have narrowed down my 28 terms to 24 terms to analyze in the future. I will write more analysis posts in the future.

What does this have to do with tags?

In my opinion, blogs are used the most of the emerging technologies. If these terms are mentioned in blogs, then most likely they will be used as tags. I now have a list of 24 tags to use to reach people interested in nonprofits that may not be part of nonprofit technology.

3 comments:

Charlie said...

you're really amazing. great post, great analysis. I think it's still very early for most nonprofits. this will be an early adopter year, but next year will be the breakout.

Anonymous said...

Great post -- the best use of Web 2.0 for now is using the Web as a tool for analyzing itself - sorry, I'll take my cynic hat off. Well, I like the idea of Web 2.0 for nonprofits, just as soon as Web 1.0 is handled well... I've convinced my ED that blogging is a Good Idea but that doesn't mean that the time is going to be there...

Anonymous said...

Interesting post. I recently had a discussion with a nonprofit in northeast Ohio about blogs and although they would love to jump on the blogging Web 2.0 train they just aren't there yet. Finding the time, money and other resources are a challenge for most nonprofits. I think this is what holds a lot of them back.