Wasting Time While Doing Good: Nonprofits and the World of reddit

It’s Friday. The deadlines have been met, projects done. I’ve got a spare few minutes to figuratively kick up my feet and see what the internet has to offer for the day. My one stop, time-wasting source is a little gem called reddit.

So, what is reddit?

Reddit is, as its tagline boasts, the front page of the Internet. Reddit is the amalgamation (22 point word on Words with Friends) of everything that is the Internet.

The simple website works like a forum: users login and post links, photos or simply invite an open discussion within a post. Then, fellow redditors can vote positively or negatively (upvote/downvote) for the post and subsequent comments.

And these links can be anything. Breaking news, funny gifs, artwork and anything else you could possibly think of. The hottest, most popular links are displayed on the front page for you to enjoy. Plus, they’ll be there before they’re picked up by news sites report it. So, you’ll be one the cool kids who can say they saw it already.

Most of the time it’s used to forget about work and look at ridiculous posts like finding out how Old Spice made their ridiculous commercials or a clever weatherman did his tricks. But, if you dig a little deeper, reddit can be a valuable source for anything and everything.

Reddit is segmented into subreddits that deal with a specific topic like gadgets, DIY and, wait for it, nonprofit.

So, that’s why it’s with great temerity (awesome word), that I want all of you to rush to reddit now.

How can you relate reddit to your nonprofit?

r/NonProfit is an untapped source of potential for the nonprofit community. There are over 8,700 users who are already there waiting for more conversations to be had.

These redditors are there to hold an open discussion on a copious (14 points) of nonprofit topics. Just looking at the front page this morning, there’s a plea for pro bono legal consultation, grant writing questions and a curious question about the possibility of plagiarizing a program.

It’s a like a convention at your fingertips.

And if you don’t see something being discussed, you’re free to create a post and begin that discussion.

Reddit continues to serve a social experiment in exploring the depths of human interactivity via technology and garnering new ideas to explore, dissect, rebuild and employ. Never has information been so readily available for users to digest and retain for years to come…..

….or it’s just to look at a photo of Bob Ross eating a piece of pizza. Who knows.

Devin Thomas

Devin Thomas is an Interactive Media Architect at Nonprofit Hub, bringing nonprofits visual and interactive content to inform and share. Whether it’s producing helpful videos like our InKind series or designing infographics, he is always looking for new ways to bring nonprofits vital information.

October 30, 2015

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