It took 2 years, 10 months, and 50,000 clicks of a mouse, but yesterday @NonprofitOrgs followed its 50,000th nonprofit on Twitter! I start each morning browsing those that followed @NonprofitOrgs the day and night before, and follow those that are nonprofits and nonprofit staff in return. There a handful of nonprofit service providers in there too.

That said, I’ve been saving up and to commemorate 50,000 nonprofits on Twitter I donated $500 to my Favorite Nonprofits. The next benchmark is when I hit 500,000 followers. That will be a $500 donation too. #GivingIsGood

Finally, since I spend a lot of time browsing nonprofits on Twitter, especially those making their debut, a few simple pieces of advice for the newcomers:

1. Upload a logo and add a bio and website before you start following people. Make a strong first impression. People aren’t following you back because the default Twitter Egg image and a blank bio tells them nothing about who you are or what your nonprofit stands for.

2. Definitely send out a few tweets before you start following people. You want to make sure that there are some “Recent Tweets” displayed when people first click on your Twitter username. Otherwise, most of those you follow will not follow you in return.

3. If you only have a handful of Twitter followers, don’t go out or follow hundreds or thousands of Twitterers. You are getting ahead of yourself. Slow it down. Twitter is much more complicated and fascinating than its first impression. Mass following will not produce the results you are hoping for. 🙂

All that said, in case you were wondering, B.A.S.I.C.S. International in Ghana was the 50,000th!