How to Use Facebook Fundraising to Boost Your Fundraising Efforts
Of the almost 2.5 billion people who use Facebook each day, each person spends an average of 38 minutes browsing through their news feed. Being the world’s largest social media platform, Facebook offers huge opportunities for nonprofits to reach their audience and promote their fundraising efforts at the same time.
Here are a few tips to start your Facebook Fundraising off on the right foot:
Two weeks before someone’s birthday on Facebook, the platform will prompt them to start a birthday fundraising initiative. By promoting your followers to build a donation drive to your nonprofit on their birthday, you’ll have access to their network and the chance to reach more people. You can even link your payment processor to Facebook to ensure their donations reach your nonprofit account even more quickly (typically it takes about a month after the fundraising event ends).
Update your Facebook page to ensure it’s up to date, informative, and relevant to anyone who may come to check out your page and mission before deciding whether to donate. Make sure your profile picture is high-res and clearly represents your nonprofit and that your “about page” is accurate and provides as much information needed to prove your legitimacy and persuade potential donors to donate.
One of the most important tasks you can complete before initiating fundraising attempts on Facebook is to create a strategy. You need to have a clear goal, a set plan, and know exactly what it is you intend on communicating with your audience to ensure your plans are successful. It’s not enough to jump blindly into social media engagement without understanding who your audience is. This is even worse if you don’t align your actions to a goal. Without a goal how will you even know if your efforts are successful?
Reach out to the right people who will promote your fundraising to the largest and most relevant audience. Using influencers has become a popular marketing method for many for-profit brands, but there are also excellent opportunities for nonprofits as well. The only difference is that other businesses will usually need to pay these influencers [social media giants with a large following of people who trust and are influenced by their behaviors, including who they purchase from and donate to], whereas, for nonprofits, you’re more likely to find influencers who are willing to promote your fundraiser out of their kindness than for money. Most importantly, when you identify your target group of donors, identify their common ties [not that they all love Taylor Swift] but who they are commonly liking and sharing posts from.
Offer your followers something of value in exchange. It doesn’t even need to be something physical that they get in exchange for their donation, although this could be a great way of bringing in donations. Building content that is valuable and builds those relationships is also just as effective. Ask yourself what it is your potential donors would truly appreciate in exchange for their donations? Is it a sponsorship shout-out on your website or Facebook page? If you’re not sure what it is, don’t be shy to ask.
Are you interested in building the best strategy that will provide your nonprofit with an excellent chance of reaching your audience and meeting your fundraising goals? Reach out to the experts at NMBL Strategies or check out our fundraising services.
