Social media - are smaller conservation charities getting it right?

Trying to identify meaningful social media statistics is hard. I feel evaluation by counts alone are unhelpful. Below I have tried to look at the number of twitter followers, for a range of conservation charities, relative to the number of members. Whilst we might expect the percentages to be similar, they are not at all.


The crude analysis suggests the social media strategy of smaller charities is more effective. Certainly those at the top are not those with biggest budgets. It's going to be interesting to see how this one evolves. 

1st - Bat Conservation Trust - 5,600 members; @_BCT_ (13,324) = 237%
2nd- Marine Conservation Society  - 7,000 members; @mcsuk (11,952) = 170%
3rd - Butterfly Conservation - 12,000 members; @savebutterflies (14,392) = 119%
4th - British Trust Ornithology - 17,000** members; @_BTO_ (19,650) = 115%
5th - Plant Life - 10,500 members; @loveplants (8,194; 15) = 78%
6th - Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust - 20,000; @gameandwildlife (2,524) 12.62%
7th - World Wildlife Fund - 300,000* members; @wwf_uk (36,064) = 12.02%
8th - Woodland Trust - 500,000 members; @woodlandtrust 41,409 = 8.28%
9th - Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust - 200,000; @WWTworldwide (14,867) = 7.43%
10th - Royal Society Protection Birds - 1,100,000; @natures_voice (76,309) = 6.94%
11th - National Trust - 3,700,000 members; @national trust 190,935 = 5.16%
12th - Wildlife Trusts - 800,000 members; @wildlifetrusts (19,722) = 2.46%


Apologies for any incorrect numbers and those charities not included.

* extracted from 2010 review "people now give us a regular gift"