Tips for hosting a successful fundraiser on Facebook
As well as hosting a traditional fundraiser, you can now hold a fundraiser on Facebook. It’s simple to set up and very easy for friends and family to donate to it. Host one for your birthday or if you’re taking part in a DEBRA event or marathon. GET STARTED!
Thank You for setting a Facebook fundraiser for us
Thank you for setting up a Facebook fundraiser for Debra Ireland and our families. We are so grateful for your kind support and the amazing awareness you’re creating for our rare disease. Social media based fundraising can often get lost in today’s internet traffic, so here are some tips we’ve come up with to help maximise your audience reach and help you reach your fundraising goal.
How long will it run for?
Facebook will default to just one week, so we suggest you run it for between two weeks to a month which will ensure you have enough lead up time coming up to your birthday / event and afterwards. You need to give people enough time to see it and allow them to donate.
Fundraising target
It is important to set a realistic and achievable goal for your fundraiser. People who know you that donate will feel their donation is making a greater impact. You can always continue to increase your goal and if you’re lucky it may go over your initial target. For example, donating €20 to a fundraiser with a goal of €600 that simply raises €150 is not as encouraging as donating €20 to a fundraiser that raises €100.
Initial message
Having started your fundraiser you can send a generic message to those that you talk to most frequently in case they don’t see your fundraiser on their timeline. Something general that sounds personal is best.
“This is a cause that’s very close to my heart, i’d really appreciate it if you could donate and help me reach my goal for Debra Ireland! Any donation, no matter how big or small will help make a difference. Thank you!”
If people can’t donate, ask them to share instead
Not everyone will be in a position to donate, would like to donate or feels comfortable with internet donatons. That’s okay! If you set up your fundraiser asking people to either donate or share the event if they don’t want to donate, your fundraiser will gain more attention than if people who did not donate did nothing at all. The people who were unable to donate will share your event and this means people will see it who perhaps can donate.
Invite your friends one by one
Invite all your friends one by one to your fundraiser. Have 4,000 friends and want to invite them all? This might seem like a daunting task but it’s more straight forward than you think.
Speed up your invites by using a desktop browser to navigate to the fundraiser page. Open the invite dialog and you should see a list of all your friends with an “invite” button beside each one. Facebook limits invites to pages and groups but it seems like it does not limit the number of invites to a fundraiser.
Click “Invite” for your first friend and press the “Tab” key. The next friends’s Invite button should now be highlighted. Press the “Space” key to press the selected button. Then hit Tab and Space for the next friend. Continue to quickly press Tab and Space until you have cycled though all of your friends. If you pass up a friend without meaning to you can hold “Shift” and press Tab to undo.
During the fundraiser
Facebook timelines are full of content and they might miss your fundraiser. It is important that you contact people several times while doing the fundraiser. You will need people to support you through this process. The majority of your donations will come directly form you networking rather than people finding out about your fundraiser through other sources. Actively updating the page on your progress or pieces of information on DEBRA Ireland and EB is a good way to engage with your friends. For example, you could post a link to an informative article or video on the fundraising page about epidermolysis bullosa. Videos work really well and Facebook really like videos so are more likely to show them.
Sharing the link to your fundraiser on other platforms
There are other social media platforms that can help you to reach a wider audience. For example, if you use Twitter you can copy the link and tweet it, send it to people by email, text message, Whatsapp and share it on Snapchat or Instagram.
Thank, thank, thank and thank again!
Whenever someone donates to your fundraiser, you will see they have donated below your fundraiser. Make sure to like the post and make sure to thank them as early as you can after they’ve donated!
Update on your fundraising progress
Monitor the donations and give updates on fundraising progress. Increase goals when necessary.
The day of your birthday
At this point you will hopefully have received a lot of donations, likes, shares and messages of support. On the actual day you will receive plenty of messages from people you know on your timeline wishing you a happy birthday.
One of the great things that Facebook does is it automatically groups all of these timeline posts together so it doesn’t fill up anyone’s news feed. Since all the posts cannot be seen, you can reply to them all with a general message and link to your fundraiser without it overloading everybody’s timeline with individual replies!
Post updates every so often on your Facebook expressing your appreciation for their support and keeping them informed on the progress towards the goal. Every time the fundraiser is mentioned it can broaden your reach to more potential donors and every time someone donates, make sure to thank them!
Almost there
When your fundraiser is about 3 days from ending or if you reach your goal early, write a nice public message thanking everyone for their generosity, reminding them all about your great cause they have donated to and how happy they have made you by supporting you.
Finally
Good luck! We really hope you reach your fundraising goal. If you have any questions or need any more information please do not hesitate to contact me on 01 4126924 or email [email protected]
(http://www.dallasredfoundation.org/tips-for-a-successful-facebook-birthday-fundraiser/)
(https://www.autismassistancedogsireland.ie/pupdates/2019/4/2/tips-for-hosting-a-successful-facebook-fundraiser)
