Social media can be a lot for any organization to navigate on their own. There’s always an update, a new feature, or something changing. The good news is that these changes are meant to help users and organizations alike get more out of their experiences on the network. Whether you work for a nonprofit or you volunteer for one, you know that supporter donations are critical for organizations. Aside from events, how else can you raise money throughout the year? Well, as social media has evolved, so too have its features including those for nonprofits. For example, there are a variety of ways that nonprofits can raise donations on Facebook.
Have you ever seen those “donate for my birthday” campaigns that people run on Facebook? Ever wondered how they do that? Facebook allows nonprofits to register to collect donations directly from the site. It’s a registration process that’s fairly simple. Once you are approved, there are several ways you can begin to collect donations.
Here are five ways nonprofits can raise donations on Facebook:
- Use your page donate button. – Your page donate button can go to an external link, such as the donation page on your website, but once you’re approved to collect donations, you can also use the donate button on your page for that purpose.
- Add a donate button to posts and ads. – You can add a donate button to posts and ads, which is a smart call-to-action when you’re already creating engaging content. For instance, let’s say that you have an event coming up. Add a donate button to the post and remind people that if they can’t attend, they can still contribute by clicking the donate button.
- Activate a donate button during live videos. – I love this option because it presents an intuitive opportunity to raise funds while you have a captive audience. If you’re going to do a live video for your nonprofit, you can add a donate button to the live video! So let’s say you’re going live at an event, or with a message of the week, or with a testimonial or for any other reason, make sure you add the donate button to your video to remind your supporters that they can donate to you and do so right from within Facebook.
- Your donors can choose one-time or recurring donations. – If you have a specific goal, try asking your supporters to consider making a recurring monthly donation. It doesn’t have to be a lot for it to add up to a lot over the duration of the year!
- Verified Facebook pages can run fundraisers for your nonprofits. – If you identify brands, companies or individuals who support your cause and have a verified Facebook page, why not ask them to run a fundraiser on your behalf? At the very least, it’ll help you reach a wider audience. And, how cool is this, Verified nonprofit Facebook Pages in the US can pledge to match donations to their Page Fundraiser up to $2,500.
Bonus tip: In the coming months, Instagram will be releasing a donate button for Stories, so be on the lookout for that! Because Facebook owns Instagram, non-profits already registered to collect donations through Facebook will likely to be able to take advantage of this feature immediately.
If you want to learn more about what Facebook offers for nonprofits, you can check out nonprofits.fb.com.
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