The Royal British Legion, RSA and the Tate Gallery have been named as the leading social media charities by a new report from nfpSynergy.

The Legion heads up the research consultancy’s rankings for Facebook with 1,8775,926 ‘likes’, while the Tate has the most followers on Twitter, with 304,987.

The RSA leads the YouTube rankings with 79,341 subscribers.

The report also found that arts, animals and cancer charities had the best social media presence, though all sectors performed well.

Income was seemingly not a factor in a charities success at social networking, with many charities able to punch their weight, and also performing well when compared to private sector organisations.

The full report can be viewed at www.nfpsynergy.net.

Cheap and relatively simple

“Social media is ‘the great leveller’ when it comes to communications,” said nfpSynergy’s driver of ideas, Joe Saxton.

“It provides a cheap and relatively simple way to reach and engage with supporters, and can be used to great effect by an organisation of any size. This is borne out by the fact that there is little correlation between a charity’s income and its social media presence.

“Thus charities often punch above their weight when competing with each other - or with major retailers and corporations - for cyber-attentions. Who knows, perhaps, one day, they might even start to compete seriously with celebrities for a share of people’s online lives.”