Why posting for the Algorithm doesn't grow your supporter base
Most nonprofits and campaigns already have what they need: volunteers, past donors, people who showed up once, an email list nobody has opened in a year. What they don't have is a way of using it.
So they post. Three times a week, sometimes more, chasing whatever the algorithm rewards this month — because posting feels like the only lever available, and because it's free. Reach goes up and down. The supporter base doesn't move.
That's the trap. Posting for reach and growing a base are two different jobs, and the first one doesn't do the second. Reach is borrowed — you don't own the platform, the algorithm, or the audience it shows you to.
A base is yours: names, contacts, people who've already said yes once and can be asked again.
Mothin Ali National Campaign
Cllr Mothin Ali's campaign for Deputy Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales grew its base a different way — and it wasn't from posting more.
It came from letting people personally take part. 120 supporters filled in an endorsement form and recorded their own video testimonial for the campaign — not liking a post, actually being in it. And instead of relying on whatever a social platform decided to show that week, the campaign kept a press coverage page on the website, updated constantly with news and those video testimonials as they came in. That page — not any single social post — was the source of truth for the whole campaign: the one place anyone, a journalist or a supporter, could go to see what was actually happening.
None of it was paid for. 88 of those supporters signed up to the newsletter. Zero ad spend, at any point. He was elected on 2 September 2025 with 5,366 first preferences — first of nine candidates, out of 16,013 valid ballots.
That's not a bigger following. It's the same following, given somewhere real to go and something real to do, instead of a feed to scroll past.
If your posting schedule is busier than your supporter list is growing, that's worth a conversation.
Get in touch to define what would actually move it.
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