Facebook is still where most Australian nonprofit audiences are, particularly donors over 40. But organic reach for pages hovers around 2–5% of your followers. The platform now favours content from people over pages — so your staff, volunteers, and supporters sharing your content will reach more people than your page posting it. Facebook Groups remain underused by nonprofits and are one of the better ways to build community. Facebook Fundraisers are a genuine revenue channel for eligible organisations.

Instagram rewards visual storytelling — behind-the-scenes content, short video (reels), and carousel posts that tell a story across multiple slides. It skews younger than Facebook but the audience is aging up. If your work is visual (arts, environment, community services), Instagram should be a priority.

LinkedIn has become a serious content platform, not just a recruitment tool. For nonprofits, it’s where you reach corporate partners, board members, sector professionals, and policy makers. Long-form posts from your CEO or program leads about lessons learned, sector challenges, and impact stories perform well here. It’s also where your thought leadership lives.

TikTok and short-form video. If your audience includes anyone under 35, short-form video matters. You don’t need production values — a 30-second phone video from a program worker explaining what they do today will outperform a polished brand video. The barrier is cultural, not technical. If your organisation can be authentic on camera, this is high-return content.

X (formerly Twitter) has lost significant audience and advertiser trust since 2022. Some nonprofits still find value for media engagement and policy advocacy, but it’s no longer a default channel. Assess whether your audience is actually there before investing time.

YouTube remains the second-largest search engine. If you produce video content — event recordings, explainers, testimonials — upload it to YouTube with proper titles, descriptions, and captions. It has a long tail that other platforms don’t.

The common thread across all platforms: people engage with people, not logos. In our work with nonprofits, the organisations getting the best social media results are the ones letting real humans — staff, volunteers, beneficiaries (with consent) — be the face of their content. The polished brand post gets 12 likes; the unscripted phone video from a program worker gets shared 200 times.