Carboni, Julia L.Maxwell, Sarah P.2015-11-062015-11-062015Carboni, J. L., & Maxwell, S. P. (2015). Effective Social Media Engagement for Nonprofits: What Matters?. Journal of Public and Nonprofit Affairs, 1(1), 18-28.https://hdl.handle.net/1805/7368We employ public management relationship theory to examine how nonprofits can effectively engage social media stakeholders in two-way communication. Though many nonprofit organizations have a social media presence, there is variance in how well organizations use social media to engage stakeholders. Simply having a social media presence is not enough to engage stakeholders. We examine Facebook posts of a stratified random sample of youth development organizations to determine what predicts stakeholder engagement. We find the type of Facebook post is a significant predictor of stakeholder engagement. Longer posts also significantly predict increased stakeholder engagement. At the organizational level, having many posts is a significant negative predictor of stakeholder engagement, indicating that users may feel bombarded and are less likely to engage. Increased organizational spending on advertising as a proportion of total budget is positively associated with stakeholder engagement.en-USAttribution 3.0 United Statesnonprofit communicationssocial mediastakeholder engagementArticle