Facebook has a community of over one billion people. This community know allows every local nonprofit or small company to become a global one.
In the last months we have seen several cause-focuzed organizations use social media and specially Facebook to drive awareness, raise funds and enable their members to make a bigger impact than ever before. Examples such as water.org or Justgiving (more than 198K fans – Through the Justgiving app, 1.8 million donors raised more than $53 million for charities in 2012.) have finished to prove that social media are key to bring make changes happen.
In 2013 in the United States holiday fundraising campaigns brought total annual giving to over $315 billion …greater than the value of the music ($68 billion), games ($82 billion), and movie ($87 billion) industries combined. This means in theory each american have donate to a nonprofit or to a cause. In addition over 74% of nonprofits in the US reports that they are using social networks to raise funds and 98 percent of US nonprofits have a page on Facebook
Why Facebook is a game changer?
There are many reasons but one that stuck me was this study by Blackbaud which stated that people are 200 times more likely to donate to a cause when a friends asks for supports.
In December 2013, Facebook announced a new feature called Donate which makes it possible for anybody to give to a nonprofit through its Facebook Page. Facebook is not charging fees to process credit card thus, 100% of donations go to the non-profits.
Why is this important for nonprofits
There are plenty of reasons for nonprofits to add donations options to their pages:
– Funding : As we know, the majority of nonprofits don’t generate revenus and they relayed on donations to survive. Facebook donation options is a tool at their disposal.
– « The donation mix » : it is not easy to grab people attention online and even offline. A good practice might be to put your message in-font of your community everywhere possible. Thus, the donate » now option on Facebook must be used in combination with donation buttons on the website, crodwfunding campaigns, mobile outreach etc.
– The way it works : When you donate on Facebook, you can select the amount that you want to give from the nonprofits Facebook Page and, importantly, share your donation with friends from News feed the moment you make it.
Final thoughs
In 2014, several nonprofits founders are telling us that they are aware of the power of social media. What they want now is being able to use social networks efficiently in order to maximise the impact of their actions. We wish plenty of nonprofits worldwide will start to test this new feature and also experts will help them to mobilize their community of embassadors.
Join US and Facebook and support us !!!