<scp>#GivingTuesday</scp>: The Impact of Social Media Engagement on Fundraising Performance for Small Nonprofit Organizations

ABSTRACT Nonprofit organizations embrace social media due to its cost‐effectiveness and timely communication capabilities. However, the direct financial returns of social media engagement remain uncertain in the current literature. How does engagement on social media impact the performance of fundraising campaigns for small nonprofit organizations? This study examines a sample of 100 small nonprofit organizations that disclosed their 2020 Giving Tuesday campaign performance on Twitter. Using a computational social science method, the study analyzes their Twitter account activities. The investigation explores the impact of account activeness and engagement on fundraising campaign outcomes across five periods: within the #GivingTuesday hashtag, 1 week before the campaign, 1 month before, 1 year before, and since account establishment. The results reveal mixed effects of social media engagement on fundraising performance, contributing to the nonprofit literature on communication effectiveness, signaling, reputation building, and public engagement. The findings also offer practical implications for nonprofit practitioners in effectively managing social media strategies.