NPOs’ Voice in CSR Partnership: An Exploratory Study Using Topic Modeling

Abstract

The present study aims to identify and interpret the emerging strategies employed by nonprofit organizations (NPOs) in communicating with their business partners on Twitter. A computer-assisted content analysis was applied to analyze 5,661 tweets posted by 65 NPOs. The study identified three corporate social responsibility communication strategies, which were characterized by a distinctive emphasis on stakeholder engagement. We analyzed NPOs that targeted different issues-initiated corporate social responsibility partnership conversations at varying levels by adopting self-promotional, partner-oriented, and balanced-interest strategies to justify and promote their relationships with multiple stakeholders on Twitter. This exploratory study contributes to the scant research on cross-sector social partnerships communication from a nonprofit perspective and adds nonprofit-specific evidence to the existing theories and practices.

Keywords

nonprofits CSR cross-sector collaboration stakeholder management social media

Introduction

The past two decades have witnessed a global trend of corporations actively seeking nonprofit organizations (NPOs) to establish cross-sector social partnerships (CSSP) as a part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices (Shumate & O’Connor, 2010a, 2010b). Nonprofit-business partnerships aim to more efficiently and effectively address challenging issues that are of concern to society, such as environmental sustainability, human rights, public health, education, and poverty by leveraging the advantages of both private and nonprofit sectors (Austin, 2000; Bryson, Crosby, & Stone, 2015). From a resource dependency perspective, these partnerships are mutually beneficial for the partnered organizations and create a synergistic alliance based on shared resources, goals, and values (Du, Bhattacharya, & Sen, 2010; Porter & Kramer, 2006; Rim, Yang, & Lee, 2016; Seitanidi & Crane, 2009; Shumate, Hsieh, & O’Connor, 2016).

Partnership relationships can explicitly address social issues and causes through active and ongoing engagement (Selsky & Parker, 2005). However, communication is still a weak link in the CSSP research. Communication scholars have argued that CSSP largely depends on whether the existence and value of such partnerships are effectively communicated to publics (Shumate & O’Connor, 2010a, 2010b). Shumate and O’Connor (2010a, 2010b) argued that CSSP communication emphasizes a shared meaning or symbol among the actors regardless of the distinct missions, motives, and identities of the nonprofit and business sectors. The cocreated value of a nonprofit to business strategic alliance is built on communication efforts from both sides (Austin & Seitanidi, 2012; Shumate et al., 2016). Thus, a balanced scholarly approach to both nonprofit and business actors is necessary to provide a complete picture of collaborative CSR communication.

Although considerable research has examined the role of corporations in promoting CSR partnerships and the effects of CSR partnership communication on corporations (Du et al., 2010; Nan & Heo, 2007), limited attention has been paid to the NPOs involved in CSR partnerships. While NPOs receive financial benefits from corporations, they also offer benefits to corporations in return. NPOs are important communication agents for their corporate partners. Since they are considered more reliable and trustworthy sources, NPO partners can reduce publics’ skepticism toward a corporation’s CSR motives, improve publics’ attitudes, and increase support for the corporation (Du et al., 2010). Given NPOs’ positive social image and strong endorsement effects, publics’ responses to the corporations are likely to improve. In contrast, if a nonprofit is reluctant to communicate about the partnership, the added value to the corporate partner will be compromised. Therefore, NPOs should not simply be treated as beneficiaries but should be seen as equal partners and important communication agents of corporate CSR initiatives (AL-Tabbaa, Leach, & March, 2014; Shumate et al., 2016).

Despite the benefits of these partnerships, not all NPOs are actively engaged in CSR communication. Emphasizing corporate stakeholders could backfire and lead to negative reactions from stakeholders. An example would be publics’ outrage toward American Academy of Family Physicians’ (AAFP) collaboration with Coca-Cola. After AAFP announced that it accepted a large donation from Coca-Cola, which would be used to educate patients and health providers about healthy lifestyles, many members protested and resigned from the organization to express their strong disagreement with AAFP advocating for Coca-Cola’s unhealthy products. Thus, some studies have suggested that nonprofits should stick to their mission when engaging in business-related communication. Since there is ambiguity about NPO-business partnerships in CSR issues (e.g., Herlin, 2015), three strategies identified in this study may help NPOs better position themselves in CSR communication with their business partners on social media.

Taken together, it is important for both partnered organizations to consider how NPOs should be positioned in their communication efforts related to CSR promotion. We argue that the effectiveness of partnership communication relies on carefully designing messages in response to various stakeholder expectations. To emphasize interactive communication and relationship cultivation, social network sites (SNS) like Facebook and Twitter have been adopted by many nonprofit organizations as a public relations tool for branding and stakeholder management (Lovejoy, Waters, & Saxton, 2012). However, little is known about how SNS are used in relation to nonprofit-corporate partnership communication.

This exploratory study aims to address CSSP communication from a nonprofit’s perspective. The current article addresses these questions by applying computer-assisted content analysis to identify and interpret the primary emerging communication strategies used by U.S. top-ranked nonprofit organizations in CSR partnership communication on SNS. The current study contributes to the emerging literature on CSSP and CSR communication by providing evidence that is specifically pertinent to the nonprofit sector.

Literature Review

Nonprofit-Corporate CSR Partnerships

Broadly defined, CSR refers to economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic activities and practices that corporations voluntarily engage in to promote good social causes (Carroll, 1999). An increasing consensus is that CSR can be implemented through CSSP to address complex social problems (Selsky & Parker, 2005). Thus, partnerships between NPOs and corporations have become a popular and promising form of CSSP to leverage the complementary advantages of both sectors and to solve complicated social problems (Seitanidi & Crane, 2009).

A growing body of literature has examined CSSP from the lens of management (Selsky & Parker, 2005). These studies have examined numerous aspects including intraorgnizational (Kolk, van Dolen, & Vock, 2010) and interorganizational relationships (Selsky & Parker, 2005), business (Seitanidi & Crane, 2009; Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001), and public affairs (Bryson, Crosby, & Stone, 2006), with emphases on descriptive case studies of CSSP (e.g., Seitanidi & Crane, 2009), recommended best practices (e.g., Austin & Seitanidi, 2012), and the consequences and impacts of these partnerships (e.g., Rim et al., 2016). Emerging literature has also identified CSSP as a type of communication interface between the partnered organizations and their diverse stakeholders. Nonprofit-corporate collaborations can be defined as “interorganizational communication relationships that are symbolized to stakeholders in order to influence the mobilization and creation of capital” (Shumate & O’Connor, 2010b, p. 578).

Considerable literature has supported the mutual benefits derived from nonprofit-corporate CSR partnerships (e.g., Austin, 2000). NPOs can create broader visibility and publicity, obtain more social capital, and remain financially stable by partnering with corporations (Kolk et al., 2010; Shumate et al., 2016). However, scholars have expressed concern about the eroding legitimacy of the nonprofit sector due to their involvement with businesses. Galaskiewicz and Colman (2006) argued that the boundary conditions of NPOs and companies are blurred in CSR partnerships, given that philanthropic partnerships are seldom purely altruistic, even though commercial partnerships often have an element of altruism. Justifying and articulating the meaning of CSR partnerships is, therefore, difficult due to the inherent conflicts and tension embedded in the relationship between the two different sectors.

Stakeholder Management and CSR Partnership Communication

The meaning of CSR partnerships is pertinent to stakeholders’ demands and expectations on how social responsibility should be articulated (Nijhof, de Bruijn, & Honders, 2008). NPOs emphasize relationship management with diverse stakeholder groups, including individual donors, government, media, and corporate partners to ensure organizational sustainability (Shumate et al., 2016; Waters & Ott, 2014). AL-Tabbaa et al. (2014) suggested that NPO stakeholders have diverse expectations on how NPOs should operate arguing that they are “normally sensitive to any incongruence” (p. 663). Since corporations and nonprofits represent distinctive social identities, their alliances may cause cognitive dissonance and raise concerns such as co-optation, compromised autonomy, loss of legitimacy, and commercialization (Baur & Schmitz, 2012; Herlin, 2015). In the context of nonprofit-corporate collaboration, corporations are also primary stakeholders of the NPO. Through communication activities, NPOs add value to their corporate partners (Austin & Seitanidi, 2012), such as increasing public awareness and acceptance of CSR promotions (Du et al., 2010). In addition, NPOs are the drivers of CSR as they push firms to engage in ethical and prosocial businesses (Arenas, Lozano, & Albareda, 2009). Since NPOs carry increasingly important roles in cross-sector collaborations, corporations also evaluate the involvement and collaboration level with NPOs depending on the NPO’s support for the corporation’s goals and actions as demonstrated by nonprofit stakeholders (Abzug & Webb, 1999).

The level of stakeholder dependency also influences the implementation of communication strategies in an online environment (Ingenhoff & Koelling, 2009; Kent, Taylor, & White, 2003). Given that not all stakeholders have equal importance for organizations, it is reasonable to expect differences in the use of communication strategies targeting various stakeholders. However, it is still unclear to what extent corporate stakeholders are identified and acknowledged by NPOs.

NPOs’ Use of Social Network Sites

The Internet enables stakeholders of NPOs to learn about the partner organizations, so it is important for nonprofits to maintain an online presence (Lovejoy, et al., 2012; Shumate et al., 2016). Social media is an alternative platform to increase stakeholder awareness of CSR efforts (Colleoni, 2013; Du et al., 2010; Etter, 2013). SNS are defined as web-based services that allow individual users to make connections and interact with others within a bounded system (boyd & Ellison, 2007). SNS offer great opportunities to facilitate organizational communication due to heavy interaction among users, extensive usage, and low cost. Among the various types of SNS, Twitter has been predominantly used by NPOs to release organizational information and connect with constituents (Lovejoy et al., 2012). SNS also offer various dialogic features, such as retweets (RT) and mentions (@). The use of RT means reposting a tweet from another user by acknowledging that user. The use of mention (@) can direct a message to a desired correspondent. Using these features, NPOs can initiate dialogic communication with their corporate partners and stakeholders.

Kent and Taylor (1998) defined dialogic communication as an ongoing process of open and negotiated exchange of ideas and opinions. Previous research has suggested a positive effect of dialogic communication on stakeholder engagement (Bortree & Seltzer, 2009), but the literature has not addressed the customization of dialogic principles for different types of stakeholders. The somewhat contradictory dynamics embedded in CSR partnerships and the simultaneous communication with diverse stakeholders on Twitter present an opportunity for further investigation of SNS in the nonprofit sector to foster dialogic communication.

Previous studies have revealed that there is limited interaction between NPOs and their stakeholders on SNS, and dialogic strategies have not been fully implemented in nonprofit SNS communication (Lovejoy et al., 2012; Waters & Jamal, 2011). Thus, NPOs’ SNS communication is an emerging field in organizational communication and public relations (Bortree & Seltzer, 2009; Lovejoy et al., 2012). To identify and interpret the emerging strategies employed by NPOs in communicating CSR partnerships, this study proposes two research questions:

Research Question 1: What communication strategies are emerging in nonprofits’ tweets about CSR partnerships?

In addition, different nonprofits have divergent involvement in partnership (Nijhof et al., 2008; O’Connor & Shumate, 2014). Emerging research has examined how top U.S. NPOs disclose their business partners on websites, suggesting that issue sector and nonprofit types influence NPOs’ disclosure of corporate partners (O’Connor & Shumate, 2014; Shumate et al., 2016). Therefore, more investigation on NPOs’ issue domains is necessary to provide a complete picture of the dynamics in CSR CSR partnership communication.

Research Question 2: Are there differences in communication strategies across nonprofit categories?

Method

This research investigates how nonprofit-corporate partnerships are communicated on Twitter by the top nonprofit organizations in the Cone Nonprofit Power Brand 100 list (2009). The various categories of issues that nonprofit organizations focus on were coded according to the classification documented in the Core Report including (N1) Domestic Social Needs, (N2) Education/Youth, (N3) Environment/Animals, (N4) Health, and (N5) International Needs.

For this study, both topic-modeling analysis and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were applied to answer the research questions. Topic modeling allowed the researchers to develop possible categories from the large data set on social media (Roberts, Stewart, Tingley, & Airoldi, 2013). ANOVA analysis allowed the researchers to differentiate among the communication strategies used in nonprofits’ disclosure of CSR partnership messages according to the distinct categories.

Twitter Data Collection

The data collection process included several steps. This study utilized a purposive sample of 65 well-established nonprofits from the 2009 Cone Nonprofit Power Brand 100. This data set was also used in another study, but research questions, methods, interpreting approaches and conclusions were completely different. The inclusion criteria for the nonprofit organizations included the following conditions for the nonprofit: (a) maintained an official website, (b) clearly identified and posted information about the corporate partnerships on the nonprofit’s website, and (c) maintained an active Twitter account, and has mentioned corporate partners in at least one tweet. Nonprofits that posted fewer than 500 tweets were excluded from this sample because of its inactive Twitter use. Python was used to collect available tweets from the 65 nonprofit organizations’ Twitter pages. The number of collected tweets ranged from 570 to 3,246 for each organization (M = 3080.84, SD = 452.48). In total, 200,255 tweets were collected at this stage.

Given that the focus of this study is on CSR parternership communication, only the tweets containing the corporate partners’ information were included for further analysis. In our case, the partnership information was operationalized as tweets mentioning (@), replying to, or retweeting (RT) the corporate partners. The number of tweets incorporating partnership information was 5,663, accounting for 2.71% of the total number of tweets. These tweets were ready for data analysis in R 3.4.1 (R Core Team, 2017) for topic-modeling analysis.

Topic Modeling

Unsupervised topic modeling is a powerful technique to find latent topics behind an unstructured large data set (J. Chang, Gerrish, Wang, Boyd-Graber, & Blei, 2009; Guo, Vargo, Pan, Ding, & Ishwar, 2016; Lewis, Zamith, & Hermida, 2013). The fundamental rationale for generating probabilistic topics is to “discover patterns of word use and connect documents that exhibit similar patterns” (Blei & Lafferty, 2009, p. 71). This study employed one of the most frequently used unsupervised topic-modeling approaches, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). In LDA, a topic is a distribution of probabilistically driven vocabulary terms (Guo et al., 2016). In essence, compared with the traditional manual coding method in content analysis, LDA uses observed data (words) to develop the latent topics. Some of the basic assumptions in LDA include multinomial distributions among words, a mixture of topics for each processed document, no order of words and documents in the processing, and no mutual exclusivity of topics (Blei & Lafferty, 2009; Chang et al., 2009). Recent years have seen an emerging application of topic modeling in the communication research focusing on a wide range of topics (Colleoni, 2013; Guo et al., 2016).

In this study, the unit of analysis was each tweet with up to 140 characters. A number of R packages were employed to execute LDA, including stm (Roberts, Stewart, & Tingley, 2016), tm (Meyer, Hornik, & Feinerer, 2008), and LDAvis (Sievert & Shirley, 2015). This study used the stm R package to preprocess the tweets mentioning partnerships (N = 5,663) by stemming all words, removing punctuation, spaces, numbers, special characters (e.g., url and emojis), and default stop words, and changing every letter to lower case. Given the specific context of our study and the characteristics of Twitter, the authors also added customized stop words to lower the probability of irrelevant and meaningless terms in the emerging topics, such as “brt,” “http,” “https,” “bbbsa,” “amp,” “made,” “just,” “will,” and “can.” In addition, since the nature of CSSP, there are many URL addresses in NPOs’ tweets, this study also removed all URL addresses since they were irrelevant and meaningless letters in the text analysis. After data cleaning and preprocessing, the final corpus consisted of 5,661 documents (tweets), 4,085 terms (vocabulary entries without repetitions), and 48,435 tokens (individual words regardless of repetitions) for analysis.

To generate consistent topics over estimation iterations, the authors used the “set.seed” function in stm to avoid changing topics for each estimation iteration. The number of appropriate topics (k) has always been a contentious issue in topic-modeling research, which is largely dependent on the context and research purpose (Guo et al., 2016). However, Roberts et al. (2016) suggested two standards in terms of deciding the number of topics (k): semantic coherence and exclusivity. Semantic coherence refers to the similarity of words within the same topic, which is expected to be high. The topic exclusivity means that the appearance of words in a certain topic is excluded from words in other topics to some degree. In general, a good topic should maximize both measures of semantic coherence and exclusivity.

Given these guidelines and the data size in this study, the authors started with five for the number of topics. The estimation of the topics from these documents was not exhaustive. Thus, the authors used the “searchK” function in the stm R package to explore the most appropriate number of topics that can reflect good topic quality. The maximum estimation was set at 100 to strengthen the preciseness and reliability of the generated words for each topic. Based on these parameters, a list of eight topics was an appropriate choice given that the requirements of both exclusivity and semantic coherence were met.

The weight of each topic was calculated, which indicated the proportion of the eight topics in the documents. The authors also assigned topic labels, as shown in Table 1, from the most frequent words in each topic.

Table 1.

Keywords, Labels, and Proportions of Eight Topics.

Topic	Word 1	Word 2	Word 3	Word 4	Word 5	Label	Proportion
1	great	team	volunt	girl	celebr	Volunteer	0.12
2	join	live	share	work	impact	Join & raise	0.10
3	help	donat	program	local	children	Help & donate	0.14
4	fig	partner	program	family	cancer	Partnership	0.13
5	make	give	can	wish	holiday	Give & close relationship	0.11
6	thank	support	learn	sponsor	event	Thank & Share	0.13
7	kid	big	maci	see	love	Love & invite	0.13
8	proud	communiti	friend	check	need	Friendship & community	0.13

Note. Eight topics were generated from 5,661 tweets posted by 65 nonprofit organizations.

Given the representative keywords for the eight topics developed by LDA (see Table 1), it is necessary to contextualize the meaning of these topics through a close examination of the original content. Therefore, the authors revisited the original tweets using thematic analysis, a qualitative method for “identifying, analyzing and reporting patterns (themes) within data” (Braun & Clarke, 2006, p. 79). For each topic, 100 tweets, about 14% of the sample (n = 5,661), were randomly generated as exemplar documents for the analysis. To scrutinize the selected data, the authors followed Smith’s (1995) five-step approach, together with the keywords that emerged from the topic-modeling result. The five-step approach has been applied to study Starbucks’ tweets regarding its CSR communication (Abitol, Lee, Seltzer, & Lee, 2018), and therefore is considered an appropriate method for our analysis.

First, 100 tweets of each topic were exported from the 5,661 tweets into an Excel spreadsheet. The sampling process was conducted using the stm R code, which returned tweets by topic proportion rank from high to low. The authors read those tweets several times to become familiar with the data. Then, each author reread the tweets, taking notes to capture the meaning of each tweet (e.g., NPO engagement, Corp activity, partnerships, etc.), and to detect emerging themes. In this step, the authors confirmed that most tweets in a topic reflected keywords developed from the topic-modeling step. Noise was identified in the process of analyzing those tweets, including random letters without syntax and non-English vocabulary. Since there were only a few such tweets in each topic, the authors marked and excluded them from further analysis. Next, the authors compared their listed themes and identified three main strategies based on common themes that emerged in the tweets.

This step identified three main strategies used by NPOs: “nonprofit self-promotional strategy,” “corporate partner recognition strategy,” and “balanced-interest strategy.” The themes from Topics 2, 3, and 5 highlighted one overarching argument, NPO self-promotion, as the first communication strategy discussed in the Results section. Similarly, themes from Topics 4, 6, and 8 emphasized partnership recognition, and themes from Topics 1 and 7 focused on a balanced-interest strategy. Table 2 displays the three identified strategies, topics, descriptions of each topic, and two exemplars of each topic.

Table 2.

Strategies, Topic Descriptions, and Exemplar Tweets of Eight Topics.

Strategy	Topics	Description	Example 1	Example 2
Self-promotion	2	Tweets in this topic emphasized collaborative work conducted by NPOs and their partners. In particular, tweets discussed the positive social impact of NPOs’ programs and encouraged public participation. Corporations’ efforts to support the NPO programs were also mentioned.	United Way of America: Over 25% of Americans skip medication to save money. With @UnitedWay, we’re working to change this. #LIVEUNITED	Girls Inc.: @CSchools Together we can achieve gender equality in engineering! Join us &; @LockheedMartin for #GirlDayChat on 2/25, 5pm EST’
Self-promotion	3	Tweets in this topic emphasized publics’ participation in the nonprofits’ programs, fundraising activities, and cause-related marketing initiatives. The messages mentioned the corporate partners and mainly called for publics’ collaborative action. Promoting donations was a salient theme in this topic.	American Lung Association: RT @HaroldWimmer: Starting today thru 5/27! Help defeat #lungcancer w/@LUNGFORCE; @CVSinAction. Donate at your local @CVSPharmacy or http\xe2\x80\xa6	Big Brothers Big Sisters of America: @cornerstorerun: Next up, #RoundRock! Join us at @RRExpress on Oct. 11 &; help raise money for @BBBSA! #CountryRun2015 @CornerStore4U
Self-promotion	5	Tweets in this topic described how CSR collaboration has a positive impact in communities (e.g., help local communities fight against disease). Fundraising efforts were described in relation to cause-related sales (e.g., holiday shopping) with an emphasis on how consumers’ purchases could help the nonprofit and/or causes.	PATH (Program for Appropriate Technology in Health): RT@WGHA How @PATHtweets, @tableau and the Zambian Ministry of Health plan to eliminate #malaria by 2020	The Conservation Fund: 4 every share of Dell’s Report 2 Customers using #DellARC @Dell4Good donate $2.50 2 plant trees in Atascosa NWR
Business partner recognition	4	Tweets in this topic highlighted the business partners’ support and contributions toward NPOs or causes, such as grants, food, and other suppliers provided by the businesses.	Feed the children: #Hunger doesn’t take a vacation, nor do we. 1200 DC families rec food, supplies 2day Thx @PepsiCo @FritoLay @Walmart	CARE USA: RT@JoinMyVillage: Expanding our reach: @GeneralMills increases funding for @CARE programs in C\xc3\xb4te d\xe2\x80\x99Ivoire.
Business partner recognition	6	Tweets in this topic expressed NPOs’ gratitude and appreciation for the corporate partners’ support (e.g., time, money).	Conservation International Foundation: Thank you for standing up for nature #NatureNeedsParis @SchneiderElec @TiffanyAndCo @Unilever @VFCorp	CARE USA: Thank you @Delta for your generous support of the 2016 CARE National Conference! #CNC16’
Business partner recognition	8	Tweets in this topic expressed NPOs’ positive attitudes toward their business partners. NPOs identified the work and contributions made by the business partners and the positive impact of the business partners’ support.	Save the Children Federation: @JNJNews: #ICYMI: We are proud that #JNJ Worldwide VP Michael Sneed rang the @NYSE closing bell with @SavetheChildren to celebrate #Givi\xe2\x80\xa6’	Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation: @novonordisk warns that cartridge holder in certain #insulin pens could crack/break if exposed to certain chemicals
The balanced-interest strategy	1	Tweets in this topic focused on the collaborative efforts made by both the nonprofit and corporate partners. Both parties’ names were mentioned and their input was identified in most messages.	Project Orbis International: Orbis board members &; @FedEx executives observe Volunteer Faculty train local RNs infant CPR. #Peru	World Vision: RT@WorldVisionUSA: 2-year-old Princess holds a jerry can of clean water her mother received from World Vision &; @ProcterGamble after flash\xe2\x80\xa6’
The balanced-interest strategy	7	Tweets in this topic were similar to those in Topic 1, but they highlighted the CSR fit and mission congruence between the NPOs and their business partners. Most NPOs also described their reasons for choosing the specific partnership.	Boys & Girls Clubs of America: We love influencing #GreatFutures! @arneduncan: Love that @BGCA_Clubs are teaming up with @google to teach coding!	The Trust for Public Land: RT@CoxEnterprises: Excited to reveal Boston’s #CoxConservesHero 2nite. Love honoring volunteers w/@tpl_org &; @fox25news”

Note. NPOs = nonprofit organizations.

Results

Nonprofit Self-Promotional Strategy

The most frequent words in Topics 2, 3 and 5 included strong verbs, such as “donate,” “help,” “give,” and “join” targeting the nonprofit’s followers for involvement and contributions to the proposed philanthropic activities. Although the business partners’ names were mentioned in the tweets, the main focus of the message was more relevant to the NPO’s mission, values, and achievements. The business partner was less powerful or functioned as an assistant in the process of promoting good social causes. For example, Muscular Dystrophy Association (@MDAnews), a NPO focusing on helping people who have muscular dystrophy, ALS, and related muscle-debilitating diseases, called for cause-related marketing purchases at a pizza store by posting that “@caseysgenstore: Visit your local Casey’s from 8/1 to 9/7 and donate $1 or $5 to help @MDAnews send children with muscle disease to #MDA\xe2\x80\xa6” Similarly, American Lung Association posted that “Donate $3 at your local @CVSPharmacy to help raise the critical funds for #lungcancer through @LUNGFORCE.” PATH (Program for Appropriate Technology in Health) mentioned Tableau, a software company, saying that “PATH is working with @Tableau on a “data revolution” for tracking and eliminating #malaria in Zambia#BFGH.”

In these tweets, the motives of health care fundraising were explicitly addressed in the messages. The business partners were mentioned, but at a glance, they were only mentioned as a location for nonprofit fundraising activities without details about the efforts or contributions made by the business partners, and the rationale for the business partner selection was less discussed. The behavioral action requests related to the mission of the NPOs were made clear and straightforward in this strategy. NPOs called for actions such as donations and visiting a specific location for participation. When mentioning their business partners, NPOs using this strategy also prioritized their own mission even when retweeting messages created by their business partners.

For example, American Cancer Association retweeted CVS’s message with an emphasis on CVS’s involvement in the cause of smoking-free campus, “@CVSinAction: The @CVSHealth Foundation is working with @AmericanCancer to implement 100 % smoke- and #tobaccofree campus policies.”

In sum, the primary purpose of these tweets was to promote the causes and activities related to the nonprofits. The use of strong verbs indicated intentional promotion by the nonprofits to attract stakeholders’ attention and help them understand more about the organization. Therefore, by using this communication strategy, the nonprofits’ main goal was to build their organizational image and brand awareness through the disclosure of partnership information.

Business Partner Recognition Strategy

Topics 4, 6, and 8 also included strong verbs in their most representative phrases, such as “support,” “thank,” “pride,” and “partner.” In the tweets, the nonprofits emphasized the role and position of their business partners in promoting social causes. Specifically, the nonprofits demonstrated the contributions of their business partners and endorsed their CSR sincerity, commitment, and accountability. For example, many messages highlighted the nonprofit’s appraisal and appreciation of their partners by sending a public “thank you” note: “Thank you @Delta for your generous support of the 2016 CARE National Conference! #CNC16”; “@BBBSA thanks @NeriumIntl for being a Gold Sponsor of the BBBSA National Conference and the Networking Luncheon on 6/28. #BBBSTogether”; and “@Justmeans: @CSX is committed to transporting Healthy foods to underserved communities in surrounding areas #CSR”.

The NPOs also shared pride about their collaborations with their business partners, which reinforced the partnership relationship. For example, on the timeline of American Cancer Association, it retweeted a message created by a business partner, IBM, stating that “@citizenIBM: @IBM proud to help end #cancer disparities in Africa @AmericanCancer @IBMHealthCorps @ClintonHealth”; American Lung Association said that “‘On #WorldPneumoniaDay, @LungAssociation is proud to partner with @Pfizer &; @TimmyDaly on Who Pneu? #PSA”; and Save the Children retweeted Johnson & Johnson’s message “We are proud that #JNJ Worldwide VP Michael Sneed rang the @NYSE closing bell with @SavetheChildren to celebrate #Givi.”

Using the partner recognition strategy, nonprofits also explicitly endorsed the legitimacy of selecting certain companies as partners. For example, when the International Rescue Committee promoted CSR partnerships, it highlighted the leadership that the business partners demonstrated in addressing refugee issues, stating that “CEOs of @benandjerrys @BoxHQ @TripAdvisor are among US business leaders telling @POTUS: “Refugees enrich America””; Conservation International explained its business partner’s CSR commitment by saying that “Our partner @McDonalds has joined the Sustainable Coffee Challenge and made a commitment to #sustaincoffee.” Such legitimacy can also be built on the long history that a company has committed to CSR. For example, when Project Orbis International introduced its partnership with FedEx, it highlighted the long history of the partnership, stating that “RT: @ORBISCA: Did you know? For more than 30 years, @FedEx has been Orbis’ leading aviation sponsor for the Flying Eye Hospital.”

In sum, tweets using the partner recognition strategy conveyed the nonprofit’s endorsement and acknowledgement of the partner’s contributions in addressing social problems, which reinforced the partner relationship with the companies. By retweeting companies’ messages regarding their contributions, the nonprofits explicitly expressed their gratitude toward the partners. Therefore, using this communication strategy, the followers of the nonprofits were well informed about the partnership and become more aware of the nonprofit’s work in relation to the private sector.

Balanced-Interest Strategy

After reading the tweets of Topics 1 and 7, the authors identified a balanced interest in promoting the nonprofit’s work and highlighting the business partners’ contributions. In these tweets, the social cause was prioritized and the value of both partnered organizations were explicitly identified and stressed. The nonprofit’s fundraising activities were designed to be integrated with the partnered company’s core business, making the partnership congruent with the value proposition of both sides. Some examples include “Crew member VoluntEARS recently refreshed the grounds @BGCA_Clubs of Central Florida Cocoa Branch! #DisneyVoluntEARS” (Boys & Girls Clubs of America); “We love influencing #GreatFutures! @arneduncan: Love that @BGCA_Clubs are teaming up with @google to teach coding!” (Boys & Girls Clubs of America); “DU and @axalta Painting a Brig Future for Wetlands #conservation #wetlands” (Duck Unlimited); and “From the @Citi Accelerating Pathways study: ‘77% of today’s youth express an interest in starting their own businesses.’ #smcso16” (JA Worldwide).

In these tweets, there was a general pattern of the issue congruence. Boys & Girls Clubs of America and Disney matched target audiences of children and teenagers, and the NPO also matched Google in youth science and technology development; Duck Unlimited aligned with a coating manufacturing company in their pursuit of environmental protection; and JA Worldwide, a youth development NPO, shared a common goal with Citi, a financial service company, in their youth business education and job seeking. With a congruence between the mission of nonprofit and core business of firms, this strategy seems to emphasize the balanced interest of partners.

Research Question 1 was answered based on the results of topic-modeling and textual analysis. Three communication strategies were identified in the nonprofit Twitter communication: (a) the nonprofit self-promotional strategy; (b) the business partner recognition strategy; and (c) the balanced-interest strategy. The remaining results focus on a comparison of the three communication strategies among the various categories of nonprofits.

Communication Strategies Used by Nonprofits of Different Categories

Overall, of the 5,661 tweets mentioning corporate partnerships, about 29% were tweeted by the Education and Youth category, 28% were by the Health category, 16% focused on the Domestic Social Needs category, 18% were dedicated to the International Needs category, and 9% were related to the Environment and Animals category.

Research Question 2 asked whether the NPOs of these five nonprofit categories used the three communication strategies differently when tweeting about CSR partnerships. Three one-way ANOVA tests were conducted. Data for ANOVA analysis was composed of the proportions of the eight topics in each tweet. The average proportion of Topics 2, 3, and 5 referred to the proportion of the nonprofit self-promotional strategies used by nonprofits across the five categories. The average proportion of Topics 4, 6, and 8 represented the proportion of the corporate partner recognition strategy used by nonprofits across the five categories. The average proportion of Topics 1 and 7 represented the proportion of the balanced-interest strategy across the five categories.

For the first communication strategy focusing on nonprofit self-oriented promotions, the ANOVA test revealed that the NPOs in health (N4) (M = 0.14), Domestic Needs (N1) (M = 0.12), Education and Youth (N2) (M = 0.10), International Needs (N5) (M = 0.11), and Environment and Animals (N3) (M = 0.10) categories were significantly different from each other regarding using self-promotion strategy when communicating about CSR partnerships, F(4, 5656) = 83.65, p < .001. Self-promotion strategy was calculated based on the averaged topic proportions of Topic 2, 3, and 5. Compared with other nonprofit categories, on average, the health nonprofits in our sample emphasized more on promoting their organizational image, missions, and contributions by communicating about the CSR partnerships compared with the other categories of nonprofits.

For the second communication strategy highlighting corporate partners, the ANOVA test revealed that this strategy was significantly different across the five nonprofit categories. Environment and Animals (M = 0.16), International Needs (M = 0.15), Domestic Needs (M = 0.14), Health (M = 0.13), and Education and Youth (M = 0.11), and significantly differed from each other on their relationship building with business partners on Twitter, F(4, 5656) = 98.36, p < .001. The business partnership recognition strategy was calculated based on the averaged topic proportions of Topic 4, 6, and 8. This means that, on average, nonprofits associated with Environment and Animals were comparatively more focused on recognizing their relationships on Twitter than other categories of nonprofits.

For the third communication strategy showing a balanced emphasis between the partnered organizations, the ANOVA test revealed that nonprofits in Education and Youth (M = 0.18), Environment and Animals (M = 0.12), Domestic Needs (M = 0.11), International Needs (M = 0.11), and Health (M = 0.10) categories significantly differed in using this strategy, F(4, 5656) = 212.13, p < .001. The balanced-interest strategy was calculated based on the averaged topic proportions of Topic 1 and 7. This means that, on average, nonprofits associated with Education and Youth were more likely to adopt a mixture of communication strategies with their business partners on Twitter.

Discussion

This exploratory study provides insights into the strategies employed by top U.S. nonprofits in CSSP communication in response to the call to emphasize nonprofits’ role as an important communication agent in CSSP (Shumate et al., 2016). In particular, the nonprofit self-promotion strategy accentuates nonprofit branding in partnership communication on Twitter. It is important for nonprofits to differentiate themselves from their business partners because the contradictory nature of these two sectors may raise the public’s doubts about NPOs’ legitimacy and independence (AL-Tabbaa et al., 2014). The business partner recognition strategy explicitly identifies the commitment and contributions of corporate partners. This signal is important to build relationships with stakeholders affiliated with both sides. For stakeholders of corporations, such as consumers, investors, the media, and employees, a thank-you note from nonprofits could convince them of the firms’ sincere CSR motives, reduce CSR skepticism, and increase public awareness of the corporation’s CSR efforts (Bhattacharya & Sen, 2004; Du et al., 2010). The balanced-interest strategy emphasizes the importance of both partners in CSR initiatives, and articulates the congruence of their partnership. Since partnership congruency has been found to positively influence the partnered organizations (Lichtenstein, Drumwright, & Braig, 2004; Nan & Heo, 2007), stressing the roles and importance of the congruent partners could legitimize and strengthen the value of the partnership.

The present study suggests distinctive preferences for different communication strategies across nonprofit categories. Compared with other categories, health nonprofits were more likely to employ a self-promotional strategy to communicate about their CSR partnerships on Twitter, which is consistent with previous research. Park, Rodgers, and Stemmle (2013) found that health nonprofits were more active and mature in maximizing their presence on Twitter compared with health organizations in government, education institutions, and corporate sectors. Promotional tweets primarily benefit NPOs themselves (Saxton & Waters, 2014). Waters (2009) also found that NPOs in the health sector (compared with education sector) were more active in fundraising with stakeholders on social media with an aim to promote the organization’s success. Our identification of a self-promotion strategy also aligns with Saxton and Waters’ (2014) argument that NPOs’ social media presence regarding promotions and mobilizations on Twitter highlights fundraising, initiating and organizing NPO activities, and advocating that stakeholders participate in events.

Another reason for health nonprofits’ greater emphasis on self-promotion might be related to the controversial reputation of their business partners. Many charitable health NPOs, such as the American Cancer Society and American Diabetes Association, are beneficiaries of large pharmaceutical corporations (Jacobson, 2005). Both of these industries have negative reputations (Gallup, 2018), so health nonprofits may avoid publicly communicating about these businesses to reduce publics’ concerns about the nonprofits’ independence and objectivity (Jacobson, 2005). In addition, pharmaceutical companies’ lack of transparency in charitable giving has been criticized as unethical (Joyce, 2018). Thus, pharmaceutical companies may stand behind the scene and use nonprofits as a front group to avoid publics’ negative reactions. Although our findings do not suggest that forming partnerships with health care companies is unethical, pharmaceuticals potentially could take advantage of health nonprofits’ greater emphasis on self-promotion in CSR communication.

NPOs focusing on environmental and animal issues were more likely to recognize their business partners on Twitter. This strategy highlights the positive work done by business partners by acknowledging their involvement with and contribution to the collaboration. Partner recognition is important to build a long-term nonprofit-business community, and to facilitate public engagement with the nonprofit (Saxton & Waters, 2014). Thus, partnership recognition empowers NPOs to expand their networks and maintain the current partners in a progressive way. Relationships with business partners could be particularly important to nonprofits that lack money and brand awareness. For nonprofits, the ability to obtain economic support has become increasingly vital to their survival due to shrinking financial support from the government and growing competition among nonprofits (AL-Tabbaa et al., 2014). Therefore, nonprofits targeting wildlife, land, and animals may want to show a positive and overt attitude toward their business partners to reinforce the current cooperative relationship and seek potential partnerships in the future.

Another interesting finding is that education and youth nonprofits have adopted a more balanced-interest strategy when communicating with business partners on Twitter. Education and youth issues encompass a broad spectrum ranging from childhood diseases and girl power, to youth skill development. It has been a popular CSR issue and is relatively easy to create issue congruence with many industries. O’Connor and Shumate (2014) identified three types of NPOs based on the number of ties with business partners: prominent NPOs, known NPOs, and solitary NPOs. Children-related NPOs, such as the Girl Scouts, BGCA, and YMCA, are more likely to connect with more business partners (O’Connor & Shumate, 2014). Therefore, the youth and edducation cause could be a popular and safe choice.

Theoretical and Practical Implications

Our three identified strategies build on first-order and second-order collaborations that align with previous findings (Austin, 2003; Gourville & Rangan, 2004; Runté, Basil, & Deshpande, 2009). First-order CSSPs highlight donations and funding requests from NPOs, and second-order collaborations emphasize networking building and awareness. We further add to the CSSP literature by differentiating NPO sectors’ preferences in applying these strategies. In addition, our findings also show that tweet messages could be concise and complete for topic modeling.

Our three strategies provide insights for both NPOs and corporate practitioners. Regarding the implications for NPOs, this study clarifies the differences in adopting various communication strategies to engage with business partners on social media. NPOs in different sectors should be aware of these differences and understand the preferred strategies used by their counterparts. One crucial mission of NPOs is to maximize the ability to attract more funds compared with competitors (Runté et al., 2009; Saxton & Waters, 2014). NPOs may better assess their status and reposition their approaches to obtain funds and nonmonetary contributions from business partners based on the preferred communication strategies across sectors on social media.

From the corporate perspective, business partners can better understand how they are portrayed by NPOs on social media. Previous research (Etter, 2014) has suggested that nonprofits and businesses should adopt an appropriate engagement strategy on social media. However, specific strategies regarding NPO engagement on social media have rarely been discussed. Corporate practitioners can adjust their collaborations with NPOs’ preferences on specific communication strategies. For instance, since the health sector highlights self-promotion, corporate practitioners who are interested in partnering with the health sector may join their proposed activities to perform CSR. However, these same corporate practitioners may consider their own presence in the nonprofit CSR communication agenda. Partnering with NPOs is intended to increase public awareness and acceptance of the corporations, but corporations often face low public awareness of their CSR efforts (Du et al., 2010). Thus, if a nonprofit emphasizes self-promotion, its added value to corporate partners might not be maximized. As for corporations partnering with NPOs using the business partner recognition strategy (e.g., environmental/animal sector), they can benefit from the relationship and community building with the NPOs and their stakeholders through communication on social media. For corporations partnering with NPOs that prefer a balanced-interest strategy (e.g., education and youth sector), CSR fit could be a consideration when they look for NPO partners.

Limitations and Future Research

The findings of this study need to be interpreted with caution given the following limitations. First, our sample of nonprofits was limited to the top U.S. nonprofits, which only captured the characteristics of a specific group of NPOs. Future studies may use a larger and more diverse sample of nonprofits to improve the generalizability of the communication strategies discussed in this study. Second, our study only focused on the nonprofit side of communication and did not consider the characteristics of the corporate partners and their impact on CSR partnership communication. Although CSR partnership communication suggests an engaged and dialogic relationship on SNS, this study has only provided a one-sided story. Future research may examine how nonprofits use the three strategies we found in this study differently when communicating with certain corporate partners, which will refine and better explain the dynamics in CSR partnerships. Third, our study suggests that the self-promotion, partner recognition, and balanced-interest strategies were used differently across nonprofit sectors. However, this finding is based on Twitter data analysis, which does not reveal the organizational and managerial factors behind the decision making of CSR partnership communication. Future research can benefit from interviews or focus groups with nonprofit practitioners in different sectors to investigate reasons behind their preference and adoption of specific CSR communication strategies. Finally, this study proposes three strategies employed by NPOs regarding CSR communication on social media with their business partners. Our findings add to the scant literature on nonprofit CSR communication. However, our findings do not predict the effectiveness of each strategy. Future research may employ experimental techniques to further test the effects of each strategy on stakeholders’ responses.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Chuqing Dong is a PhD student at Hubbard School of Journalism specializing in public relations and organizational communication research.

Yafei Zhang is an assistant professor of business communication with a research focus on organizational communication at Paul and Virginia Engler College of Business, West Texas A&M University.

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