Ep 56: Facebook's Fundraisers: Navigating the BIG Changes to Year-End
EPISODE 56
Thriving Amidst Facebook's Updates
“Facebook fundraisers have never been a reliable source of fundraising. It is not the backbone and anchor of your fundraising strategy, nor should it be.”
Are you letting the Facebook fundraising panic sweep you off your feet? Hold tight, as we dig deep into why you shouldn't let this be your main fundraising platform and how to craft a more reliable and sustainable fundraising strategy. We give you the skinny on donor stewardship, key insights on building a hard-hitting donor welcome series, and we'll even let you in on our top two donation tools to amplify your online fundraising game. Let's not forget about the recent Facebook updates that have organizations on their toes - we share our strategies on how to use these changes to your advantage and maximize your campaign's reach and visibility.
Own your communication channel! We hammer home the significance of building an email list, a platform you have absolute control over. We equip you with strategies to pivot swiftly amidst the ever-evolving social media landscape. Now, if you're ready to skyrocket your organization's growth sustainably with ease and massive impact, let's get on a no-strings-attached discovery call to discuss my Smart Growth Method. Tune in and learn how to ride the wave of Facebook fundraising updates with unwavering confidence and a solid strategy.
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Resources mentioned:
Easy Emails for Impact: My email marketing course for nonprofits, consultants, and social impact businesses. Learn more here: www.splendidcourses.com/easyemails
Amplify Social Impact: My signature digital marketing and online fundraising course. If you’re ready to start a profitable digital ambassador program or influencer marketing program, this course is for you! Sign up for my free masterclass and get $200 off the course here.
Private coaching: This is the fastest way to kickstart your growth and have support, strategy, and momentum to grow sustainably without burning out. Start by scheduling a discovery call here.
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TRANSCRIPT:
00:02
Welcome to the Purpose and Profit Club podcast for nonprofit leaders, mission-driven creatives and social entrepreneurs. Get ready to stop dreaming and start doing. Here. Ideas become action. We prioritize purpose and profit. You ready, let's go.
00:20
So Facebook recently came out with a major update that is freaking out a lot of nonprofits. We're going to dig into that update today, if you need to be worried about it, what changes you need to make and how I'm advising my clients to handle the changes. So you probably got the alert for your nonprofit's Facebook page that basically says something to the effect of beginning October 31st of 2023, they are partnering with the PayPal giving fund. Okay, so no more network for good for Facebook fundraisers. So that payment processor is now the PayPal giving fund, and this is a change that they've been making. This is in motion. This isn't something that you can negotiate or anything like that. Okay, so that's the first piece. The second piece is that Meta Facebook is no longer covering donation fees. All donations will now incur a payment processing fee. That fee is 1.99% plus 49 cents per transaction. So that's what I'm looking at that announcement right here.
01:30
So a lot of nonprofits, particularly those that are in the small to midsize, got this message and were kind of freaking out or totally freaking out, and I get it and I don't get it. I get it because change in general freaks us out, right, and I've got this well oiled machine, and then Facebook it feels like is throwing it you a massive curveball, and year end is approaching, its partners, and this is happening before year end, so it's not like you can, you know, punt and wait until next year. So, for those of you that are either concerned, worried or I had a lot of people say Facebook fundraising is our most valuable, most reliable, most sustainable source of revenue. In so many words, we rely on this to be funded. Right, and those were the people that were freaking out the most. And to that I say that is a terrible, terrible strategy for sustainable fundraising, and let's dig into that piece.
02:40
Facebook fundraisers have never been a reliable source of fundraising, and I'm going to dig into why. But first I just want you to get this headline, which is that Facebook fundraisers are a donor churn machine. Okay, why am I saying that they're a donor churn machine? They're not predictable, they're not reliable and they do not give you that sustainable revenue. Okay, the number one reason why they don't is because they lack the donor data. So you've likely gotten the payment from Network for Good, which can take a while to show up in your account, and that's all you get. You don't get an email, you don't get a contact information, you definitely don't get a direct mail address. Nothing, there's zero opportunity for stewardship, and that has always been my number one gripe with it.
03:28
I always view Facebook fundraising as like the cherry on top, the extra, the icing on the cake, all of the metaphors. It is not the backbone and like the anchor of your fundraising strategy, nor should it be. And you've probably heard me talk a lot about online fundraising and I'm a huge fan of online fundraising. I think it's really, really crucial for every single nonprofit organization to have a powerful online fundraising strategy. So how do those two things kind of not sync up together? For me, it's all about the tools that you use for online fundraising. Now I'm all in on you using Facebook as a platform to promote your online fundraiser.
04:13
Let's say you've got a peer-to-peer fundraiser and just talking to my client today, she's a great peer-to-peer fundraiser that she usually has a team of 50 go in and they're her street team for this peer-to-peer fundraiser. So ideally, those teams of 50, teams of 10, whoever those peer-to-peers are. They're using a donation tool that is taking the donors off site very seamlessly, in one click to make the donation. Okay, the reason why we want to see that is because when they do that and they see the beautiful landing page that your organization has set up, it's optimized for conversions. You get the donor data. You get an opportunity to thank the donor. I mean, forget Donor data from the sense of like. We need the donor data. We also need it to be able to thank the donor.
05:09
So that's the first piece is let's use a donation tool, and there's so many different ones out there. If you have a question about which tool, I have two favorites send me a message and I will link to you my two favorites. Or go to the Tools page on my website slundered atlcom, forward slash tools, and there are some favorites there. Okay, I feel like I've tried them all and there are some Outstanding ones. That's the first piece. Okay, so we want to take them off site. I want to take them from Facebook in one click, straight to where they need to be and have a really frictionless Checkout process. Frictionless means that if they want to use PayPal, they can. If they want to use Apple pay, they can. If they want to use a credit card, they can, frictionless. Okay, so there's very, very like there's so many out there. I will link you to my favorite to just send me a message. That's the first piece.
05:59
The second piece we want the donor data. We want to be able to thank them. We all want to be able to nurture and stew it steward them. I just taught an email welcome series workshop and that is all about that process. Right? We don't want these donors to be one and done donors. The average donor who makes a gift one time and Stays to make a gift a second time is just 20%. That means eight out of ten donors make a gift once and then they're out. Well, one of the reasons why they're out is because they're making on a platform like Facebook, where they're giving you zero opportunity To nurture them, to say, hey, this is what we're up to, come hang out.
06:37
The next thing that people were absolutely freaking out about was the processing charge, and Most organizations that were freaking out about the processing charge were smaller organizations and they're thinking we need every dollar Possible. And I hear you, you need every dollar possible, but when you are thinking with that limited of a purview, that limited of a view forward, it literally keeps you. If you've ever tried walking in a straight line, okay, picture this you're walking on balance beam and You're looking down at your toes one foot, one foot in front of the other, one toe in front of the other. That's actually a recipe for falling off the balance beam. Did you know this? I learned this many years. You actually want to look ahead of you, right? You want to look a couple steps ahead of you. You want to look at the line ahead of you, and that's really the cost of doing business online. So do I want you to spend 10% on on donation processing fees? Of course not, but a Few percentage points, so that people are able to have a frictionless donation experience online.
07:44
People who, like me, or like my neighbor or like my friend across the world, would otherwise just make no donation Because they don't have their credit card memorized, they don't know the login instructions, they it's not red, it's not at the ready, right? The ease of making that donation is why people so often donate when we make it too hard for them and we ask for too much information. Right, like? You want me to write you a check? I had a vendor recently say you can pay me two different ways. You can mail me a check or you can pay through an online app that I was not a Didn't have an account with, and I thought to myself no, no, no, no, no. This is no good, this is not gonna work, right? Do you want me to pay you? Amazing, here's a credit card to pay you, right?
08:37
We want to make sure that, in order for your organization to increase the revenue, you're not just adding a bunch of barriers along the way and the folks that are worried so much about a 2% processing fee, or the folks that are looking down at their toes Falling off the balance beam and then saying, christina, why isn't our revenue growing? I would rather play four percent for a kick ass AI powered Fundraising tool that optimizes your conversions, that gets more people Mobilized and excited about hosting a peer-to-peer fundraiser for you. Right, so that you 2x, 5x or even 10x your goal. This has happened to every single one of my amplify social impact students. Okay, right, when you use a better system, does it cost a little bit more more money? Yeah, but do you make 5x more, yes, okay. So this is one of those opportunities for you.
09:35
If you're in that camp where you're just freaking out about the, about the Cost associated with it to go Ooh, does a million dollar organization worry about a 1% Fee? No, they don't, because if they said to all their donors today, you know what, you got to mail us a check, how many donors, right, and they'd say you got to mail us a check, but the good news is there's no processing fees. No, we've just made the donor experience terrible. Now, if a donor prefers to mail your check, amazing, let's do that, but if that is not their preferred method, we don't want to add friction. Okay, so that's the next piece. Don't worry about the processing fee. Honestly, anything under 4-ish percent, I'm good with Higher than that. Send me a message, let's talk. We can find you something better.
10:21
Many of these tools don't even have my favorite ones, don't even have a monthly fee. It's not a software like a monthly fee. So it's like why are we not using this? Why are you listening to this podcast and you're still using just PayPal to accept donations or just Facebook fundraising to accept donations? No, we can optimize, we can do better. And when you optimize. When you change to a better tool, you literally see funding go up.
10:51
Okay, so my favorite way for organizations to boost their online fundraising and it answers the question how do we get more donors, how do we get more donors online is to deploy a strategy that I teach and amplify social impact. In that course, I teach you the blueprint for creating a street team. A street team does a couple of things. One, it buys your time back so you're not on the content creation hamster wheel just blasting content out there hoping that people donate. Two, it gets people to endorse and use the power of influence for your organization. That matters because it drives up awareness and it drives up that social proof, that endorsement of like. I believe in what your cause, your mission, does. This is the best strategy for fundraising. Your end.
11:45
I'm teaching a free webinar coming up. I'm going to link to it in the show notes. Come to that webinar, come, come, come. You can learn about the course. You can learn about how to optimize your end fundraising and we can all just take a collective and not freak out about the Facebook changes.
12:02
And let's let's end with this. Facebook's always going to change. What is true today may not be true tomorrow or next month or next year. Okay, the reach you get on a post today will most certainly not be the reach you get on a post next year, and so it's. It's going to feel a lot better for you to just be prepared for that, like it's a tool that we use to increase your visibility, to increase your funding. But it's not your tool, right, it's not your own network, and that's why I talk a lot about email, because your email list is your own. It is your asset.
12:42
So with Facebook, we got to play the game a little bit, but it doesn't mean that the game is like over and done. It's just let's pivot, let's optimize, let's have some fun with it, let's not freak out about a 2% charge and let's use this as an opportunity if you're someone who has been reliant on those Facebook fundraisers to go okay, now's the time. I'm going to put in a couple hours and make the change. Now we go. All right, I'll see you next time. If you ask me, everyone should have a coach, especially you. I want to invite you to schedule a free discovery call with me. Go to splendidatlcom forward slash contact. You'll see my calendar there. Talk a call with me, you'll learn about my smart growth method, where we can grow your business or organization sustainably with ease and massive impact.