8 Nonprofit CEOs Who Tweet

Fred Krupp is the CEO of the Environmental Defense Fund

Recently, BusinessWeek published a slideshow of CEO's who use Twitter, noting the dramatic rise of CEO's who use Twitter to clue customers in on new services, help them with questions about their products, and generally get a little bit personal with customers, business associates, and the public.

There are some other benefits to having your nonprofit's CEO be on Twitter, these might include:

• Source of news
• Brand Building
• Focus Group/Research
• Networking Tool
• Monitoring
• Drive Traffic to web site
• Humanizing your communications

Of course, if your CEO is going to Twitter, they have to be keep a consistent schedule and be authentic.    There's been a bit of debate about celebrity Twitter users who have "ghost" twitterers or simply people helping them tweet.

I did a brief scan to see if there any nonprofit CEOs who Twitter.  Here's a few that I found:

1. @carlPope is the executive director of the Sierra Club, the nation's oldest and largest grassroots environnmental group.  His tweets are about his organization's work and retweeting others messages.  Take for example

RT @maryannehitt http://twitpic.com/5n4sq - Re-posting great Seattle rally photo by Sierra Club's Dan Ritzman #nocoal #epacaa

2. @fredkrupp who is the CEO of the Environmental Defense Fund tweets about his organization's work to save the environment, plus is sharing interesting news articles or resources from his network of Twitter followers.

RT @MarcGunther A thoughtful piece in The Economist on Jacqueline Novogratz and The Acumen Fund. http://tiny.cc/7japZ

3.  @billshore is Bill Shore and the CEO of Share Our Strength, an organization dedicated to getting rid of hunger.  He tweets a lot about leadership issues and of course, his passion - ending hunger.

"Last hope for ending Hunger - Washington Post article"  (Article here, some folks from Share Our Strength quoted)

4.  @dallant is Victor d'Allant who is at Social Edge.  He doesn't identify himself with his organization, but his personal web site.  Doesn't tweet much about his organization, but shares interesting and witty observations.

"Albert Einstein said:  I never think of the future.  It comes soon enough"

5.  @robertegger is Robert Egger and the CEO of DC Central Kitchen but identifies his Twitter profile with his personal web site.  Aside from tweeting about his cause, he shares that he is human! 

Happy 25th Wedding Anniversary!

6.  @KevinCurley is the CEO of NAVCA a UK third sector organization.  His tweets are thought provoking questions related to the organization's work.  Take for example:

Still no offers? If I am wrong I will give your charity £100 in 2021. Where are you all? Surely you have the confidence to say I'm wrong?

7.  Cecile Richards is the President of Planned Parenthood.   She only follows one person, but has a following of 708.   Most of the tweets are about Planned Parenthood activities.

Check out this video blog of my visit with peer educators at Planned Parenthood of New Mexico! http://bit.ly/Ii0sZ

8. @kim_gandy is Kim Gandy who is the president of the National Organization for Women NOW.  Her tweets about her organization's issues, but she also lets us know when she's being interviewed by the media.

Sitting on-set for CBS news, just finished ABC

Does your Nonprofit CEO Tweet?  What's the strategy?  Do they do their own tweeting?  What's the value-added?

Update

Debra Askanase has written an excellent post about why nonprofit CEOS should use social media 

Other Nonprofit CEOs who Tweet:

9.   @wfaircloth CEO of Upic Solutions
10. @unitedwayswells is Pamela Beckford, Executive Director of United Way

Comments

[Chris McMahon]

CCO for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center (http://nurfc.org) tweets (http:/twitter.com/PaulB67). It's about 50% personal, 50% organization related.

[Jill Savage]

I'm a non-profit CEO who tweets and blogs. I've been doing it for about 6 months. I do it to keep moms in touch with Hearts at Home (www.hearts-at-home.org) and to let them know I'm human and I do the same things with my kids that they do. No ghost tweeters for me...I do it all myself. My twitter name is jillsavage. Blog: www.jillsavage.org

Another CEO who tweets and blogs is Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing. He does a great job both with his blog and twitter.

[Bianca]

One of the best NPO CEOs to use Twitter is Doug Ulman of the Lance Armstrong Foundation. He does it all himself and includes news about the organization, the fight against cancer, and interesting reads and resources. He has over 35,000 followers.

http://twitter.com/livestrongceo

[Judy]

Sarah Owen is the Executive Director of CCMI (http://www.ccmileecounty.com) and she tweets (http://www.twitter.com/hungerfighter). She does her own tweeting and her goal is to end hunger and her passion is ending childhood hunger. She tweets to raise awareness of this.

[Paris Marron]

Do you have any tips for encouraging your ED to tweet more? I'm from CODEPINK. We tweet @codepinkalert. Our co-founders both tweet, but @medeabenjamin @heartofj (Jodie Evans), but very sparsely. I've been trying to get both of our cofounders to tweet more, especially from actions, protests, trips, etc. Any suggestions?

[Diana Scimone]

I'm pres of the Born 2 Fly Project, which works to stop child trafficking (www.born2fly.org). I tweet @DianaScimone.

There are a lot of anti-trafficking NPOs that tweet; I posted a list on my blog a few Follow Fridays ago: www.dianascimone.com (scroll down to April 24).

Diana Scimone
President
The Born 2 Fly Project
@DianaScimone

[Pam]

@StevePasierb is President & CEO of The Partnership for a Drug-Free America (http://twitter.com/StevePasierb).

[Sameer Vasta]

Cameron Sinclair from Architecture for Humanity (@casinclair) has always impressed me with his authenticity and drive to engage in conversation on Twitter.

[Justin Michael]

Carol Schrader is the CEO of givezooks.com. I follow her tweets @zooker1. ; ) - jmike!

[Jacob Samuelson]

Jacqueline Novogratz (@JNovogratz) of Acumen Fund is a great person to follow.

[Corin Barsily Goodwin]

I'm a nonprofit ED/board chair of Gifted Homeschoolers Forum (GHF)(http://giftedhomeschoolers.org) who Tweets every so often, but not exclusively GHF-related.
Corin Barsily Goodwin (@mamacorin)

[Susann]

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[url=http://generatingfunction.com/recurrent-events/62-delayed-recurrent-events]delayed recurrent[/url]the required set of{Pi/n)}, and thehomogeneous chains

[Alnisa Allgood]

Nonprofit Tech's Executive Director manages the organizational account @nonprofit_tech Alnisa Allgood. Mostly informational tweets mixed with commentary, and day to day operation information.

[Michelle Eklund]

Jessica Lawrence (@jessicalawrence) is the CEO for Girl Scouts of San Gorgonio Council. Plus, she's among the youngest CEO's in Girl Scout history! Tweets are part personal, part business. She also maintains a professional blog (http://www.girlscoutssangorgonio.org/ceoblog/), personal blog (http://jessicahlawrence.wordpress.com/), and posts podcasts (http://jlawrence.podbean.com/).

[Tina]

My CEO, @GeorgeStevens, at Coastal Community Foundation tweets. He manages his own account and uses it to invite conversation and share news about issues in our community. His tweets also feed into his Facebook profile and selectively into our Facebook page (http://bit.ly/beafan).

[Gabriela]

I think nearly everyone @sunfoundation loves to tweet. Our Executive Director @ellnmllr is quite prolific in her tweets about what's really going on in Washington. We even include our twitter handles in our staff profiles -- see Ellen's as an example.

[Eli Saddler]

I'm the founder and executive director of OceanHealth.Org and I tweet daily (@oceanhealth) about ocean news and issues, as well as about our upcoming events or calls to action. It has been great to connect with so many ocean-loving folks and other ocean nonprofits over Twitter.

[Linda Raftree (@meowtree)]

Several of Plan International's offices are on twitter officially and staff are also tweeting about work via their own accounts (me for example). 2 of our CEOs (Ian Wishart of Plan Australia @ianatplan and Marie Staunton CEO of Plan UK @mariestaunton) have both started tweeting recently. Plan is active in over 60 countries worldwide working on child centered community development.

[Judy Salerno]

As ED of Community Foundation I am tweeting and trying to encourage the npos in my area to do so as well. @ccfdn

[Mishri Someshwar]

Steve Loflin, who's the Executive Director of The National Society of Collegiate Scholars (NSCS) also tweets @sloflin. NSCS is an honors organization inviting high-achieving freshmen and sophomores at more than 235 US universities-- students run community service and social activities on campus; members can apply for $250,000 in scholarships, among other benefits.

[David Bacon]

I'm the Founding Director of Carpets for Communities, a small but award winning innovative Social Enterprise getting kids back to school and keeping them there in Cambodia. Personally I've recently started tweeting a mix of my and organisational stuff. I tweet because it can feed into my facebook so i cover two updates in one...@davidnbacon.

We've just employed a new CEO who we will be asking to tweet after he starts in July as part of his job.

[Averill Strasser]

I'm Founder and COO of Water Charity, a nonprofit that does water, sanitation, and public health projects worldwide. I tweet!

[Steven Bowman]

I was CEO of the Australian Society of Corporate Treasurers and also the Australasian Institute of Banking and Finance, and National President of the Australian Society of Association Executives...Does that count?? Steven Bowman tweet @consciousgovern

[Adam Markham]

I'm the CEO of environmental non-profit Clean Air-Cool Planet and I've been tweeting for about a month now. I have about 230 followers and post 5-10 times a day. I find it a great way to build a network and a source of news and new information. I follow several other non-profit CEOs who tweet.

[James Topham]

@nuttsatwarchild is founder and exec director of War Child in North America. She recently live-tweeted from Darfur. Well worth checking out. Here's an example: http://twitter.com/NuttsAtWarChild/status/1534774794