Social Media: Icing on the Cake for Successful Fundraising
Any nonprofit fundraising professional knows that a successful fundraising strategy involves many moving parts. There’s the personnel aspect (donors, volunteers, staff members, fundraising consultants), the technology to connect with donors and collect donations, and the overarching strategy that organizes it all.
At this point, we’d guess that one of your organization’s “moving parts” is social media— specifically Facebook. As the network has facilitated $3 billion+ in donations as of 2020, it’s fairly commonplace for nonprofits to utilize it in their fundraising efforts in some capacity. But, are you leveraging the platform strategically to truly enhance your overall fundraising strategy?
At GoodUnited, we’ve extensively researched and reported upon Facebook fundraising, with the goal of helping nonprofits improve their strategy on the platform. Heading into 2021, we’ve noticed a few unique ways that nonprofits can use the platform to level-up their overall efforts. We’re going to cover the following strategies:
Use Facebook Fundraising to Replace Any Lost Donations
Use Facebook Groups to Create Online Communities
Use Facebook Messenger to Cultivate Online Relationships
Use Facebook Data to Enhance Your Other Fundraising Efforts
Many nonprofits are using Facebook fundraising, but few are using it in the truly innovative ways outlined in this guide. We’re going to cover four unique strategies that you can use to raise more funding and connect with supporters like never before.
Let’s dive in.
Use Facebook Fundraising to Replace Lost Donations
We don’t need to rehash the challenges that 2020 brought for your nonprofit. Donors who had to cancel pledged gifts as their financial situations changed, in-person peer-to-peer events that couldn’t go on as planned— we could go on. In response, you adjusted your fundraising strategy and pivoted in-person events to the virtual sphere. You put a metaphorical band-aid on 2020, and it worked!
However, we’re now heading into a new year— and new year, new challenges. For example, while virtual fundraising events may have worked last year, many left something to be desired and failed to provide the level of value that participants experienced in years prior. This also means those that were able to donate may be quickly approaching burnout, giving without receiving value from your organization in return.
This is where Facebook steps in as a platform with an unlimited reach that’s ideal for augmenting your existing fundraising channels. With Facebook fundraising, you can:
Encourage supporters to start their own fundraisers, such as birthday fundraisers, on behalf of your nonprofit to bring in additional fundraising revenue.
Create quick fundraising events with little effort on behalf of your team— it’s as simple as creating a post and inviting supporters to join in.
Find new supporters that you’ve never interacted with before, connect with them, and encourage them to fundraise on your behalf all through one accessible platform.
Learn more about your supporters, including their preferred way of engaging with you going forward. This can be invaluable for future prospect research efforts.
We’re not recommending overhauling your entire fundraising strategy and replacing key efforts with Facebook. However, considering the average gift to a Facebook fundraiser ranges anywhere from $20 - $35, and the average fundraiser raises at least 6 gifts, it can’t hurt to prioritize the platform.
Here are a few steps you can take today to increase the likelihood a supporter creates a Facebook fundraiser on your behalf:
Create educational materials about Facebook fundraising. Answer common questions, like how Facebook donation tax receipts are issued and how the payment process works for donors. Share these guides on your social media profile and website.
Run Facebook-based events. Consider holding a social media challenge, such as a month-long step challenge. Invite supporters to walk a certain distance each day and raise funds while they do so, in a fundraiser that takes little effort from your team.
Run ads targeting supporters who may be interested in starting a fundraiser. For example, run a targeted ad to reach all of your Facebook supporters with upcoming birthdays. Invite them to donate funds raised on their special day to your organization.
With Facebook, you can engage new donors in a safe, socially distanced manner in 2021 and replace some fundraising revenue lost due to the ongoing uncertainty.
Use Facebook Groups to Create Online Communities
Now, let’s say your organization already has a fairly strong Facebook presence. You have a consistent content strategy, a decent following, you receive some revenue through Facebook fundraisers, and you’ve run ads to expand your reach. Maybe your Facebook strategy has even grown stagnant, and it feels like you’ve achieved all you’re going to with the platform.
If you relate to that, consider using Facebook Groups to kick your strategy up a notch. With groups, you can create a community for users, connect with supporters from afar, and have a better understanding of the messaging shared about your organization on Facebook. Plus, we’ve seen Facebook’s algorithm favor group posts over individual posts in recent years, so it’s more likely that users see a post from a group than say, your nonprofit’s overall profile.
The first step is to invite users to join groups, which you can do in a few different ways:
Targeted Ads: For example, create a group for Facebook Fundraisers. Then, run an ad campaign targeting all of the users who have held fundraisers for your organization in the past month.
Thank-You Messages: When a user creates a fundraiser on your behalf, post a thank-you message as a comment directly on their post. Within that message, invite them to join a group created to unite your supporters on Facebook.
Cross-Platform Messaging: In your email newsletter, on other social media platforms, within your direct mailings— share the opportunity for supporters to connect on Facebook by joining groups.
Once users have joined your group, there are a variety of ways to engage with them and elevate your strategy. In this GoodUnited guide, we discuss how virtual peer-to-peer fundraising is especially effective when groups are involved as a method for P2P participants to connect with one another and share fundraising tips. Beyond that, with Facebook’s Live Donate tools, you can actually hold full live-streamed fundraising events and accept donations from within groups as well.
Use Facebook Messenger to Cultivate Online Relationships
Another powerful way to use Facebook Groups is to use them to get supporters to opt-in to a conversation via Facebook Messenger.
Messenger is a communication channel on Facebook— one that allows for one-to-one conversations between supporters and your nonprofit— that is highly underutilized by nonprofits. If your nonprofit uses Messenger to connect with supporters, you can:
Share tips, encouragement, and gratitude. If a user has just started a Facebook fundraiser, you can share tips to help them raise more funds. For example, if they kick off the fundraiser by making the first donation themselves, they’re more likely to reach their goal!
Ask questions and share surveys. In Messenger, you can gain additional contact information, learn how users want to engage on Facebook and beyond going forward, and understand why users are supporting your organization on the platform.
Provide new information about your organization. You can share links to educational resources and updates whenever you unleash a new way to give back. Sending new donation and volunteer opportunities to users directly through Facebook Messenger increases the likelihood that supporters will see the opportunity.
Follow-up after campaigns. For example, if you host a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign on Facebook, you can follow up with all of the participants after the fact. Share statistics about how much was raised for the campaign through Facebook and what the funds will be used for.
According to the donor retention experts at Qgiv, offering a variety of ways to give, sharing impact stories, and following-up with donors are three ways to increase your supporter retention rate. With Messenger, you can do all of that and more, effectively raising your relationships on the platform.
Of course, if connecting with each supporter on Facebook Messenger is beyond your organization’s current bandwidth— as we mentioned earlier, Facebook’s reach is unlimited and you could have many supporters on the platform— consider working with a company that can help you build intimacy with Facebook supporters at scale.
Use Facebook Data to Enhance Your Other Fundraising Efforts
Last but certainly not least, use the data from your Facebook fundraising efforts to enhance your efforts off of the platform. There are a few sources of data that can come in handy, such as the Daily Transaction Report, which you can download directly from Facebook, and the information you gather from connecting with users in groups and via Messenger.
This data can help with:
Prospect research. Facebook is a great prospect research tool for understanding a user’s affinity to give. If a user has successfully reached their goal with many Facebook fundraisers, they’re likely to be interested in contributing more in the future.
Your fundraising plan for the year. When you outline your fundraising plan for the year, it’s important to understand how much you can expect to bring in through various funding sources. Facebook data can help you predict how much you can expect to raise from the social network and budget accordingly.
Your overall fundraising and social media strategy. When you understand what interests users about your mission, you can create opportunities that will appeal to them going forward. If users are responding well to Facebook-based peer-to-peer events, you can continue providing them in the future!
Of course, this isn’t as simple as downloading the raw data from Facebook, organizing it in your constituent relationship management (CRM) system, and calling it a day. You’ll want a dedicated strategy for implementing the insights from this data in your overall fundraising and donor stewardship efforts. It may be worthwhile to work with a fundraising consultant— specifically one with data expertise— in this realm.
While you shouldn’t replace your overall fundraising efforts with Facebook fundraising, the platform’s tools can certainly provide a helpful boost to your strategy. When used effectively, you can use Facebook to understand supporters, inspire them to engage with you, and grow your relationships with them over time.
With Facebook fundraisers, groups, messaging, and data, you can raise funds, learn more about your supporters, and enhance your efforts in-platform and beyond. Good luck!
Author: Maria Clark
Executive Vice President, Partnerships and Chief Evangelist, GoodUnited
Maria Clark is a nonprofit executive and technology evangelist with 30+ years of industry experience. Today she serves as Executive Vice President of Partnerships and Chief Evangelist for GoodUnited, the social fundraising solution. Maria is a champion of the new and has fearlessly led change management efforts throughout her career.