Facebook fundraiser

Top Tips

Overview

So you have decided to host a Facebook fundraiser? That’s amazing! We are delighted that you have chosen to change the world for children with autism by supporting us. Unfortunately just creating a fundraiser, posting about it once and leaving it out there probably isn’t going to get very much traction. So we would like to share with you a few tips to help you reach your fundraising goal.

Follow these steps and you could be surprised at how much support you will get for your fundraiser!

Getting started

Whether you are pledging your birthday or doing a challenge event, setting up a Facebook Fundraiser couldn’t be easier. CLICK HERE and Facebook will guide you through the setup and in just a few clicks you will be ready to start sharing your fundraiser. Don’t forget to check out our Facebook Fundraising tips below to make the most out of your fundraiser.

The best news is Facebook Fundraisers are currently 100% free and Facebook transfer all monies donated directly into our bank account. We as a charity are not charged any fees or transaction charges. Your donors are not charged a cent for donating. Every single cent donated goes towards changing the world for a child with autism. Isn’t that awesome!

Successful Fundraising Top Tips

Time It

If possible schedule your fundraiser so that it has a good lead up time and ends about 4 days after your actual birthday or event.

Using our tips you should expect to see a breakdown similar to the following:

·         Pre-Birthday/Event: 64%

·         Day of Birthday/Event: 27%

·         Post-Birthday/Event: 9%

Set a Lower Goal

Don’t set yourself up for disappointment early! Set a lower goal like €150 or €200. This provides several psychological benefits. Your friends who donate will feel like their donation makes a bigger impact, there is a more realistic heartstring pull to reach your goal, and you can always increase your goal or let it go over your initial ask. Donating €10 to a fundraiser with a €500 goal that only raises €100 is depressing – donating €10 to a fundraiser that hits its €100 goal feels great!

Have a “Free” Option

Not everyone will be able to donate, wants to donate or trusts internet donations (although we can assure you Facebook donations are very safe and fee free). That is okay! If you set your fundraiser up asking for people to either donate or share the event if they don’t want to donate, your fundraiser will get more attention and traction than if the people who didn’t donate did nothing at all. The people who didn’t want to donate will share the event and it will take over the internet!

“It’s my birthday and I challenge you to help me change the world for children with autism by doing one or both of these things: 1) Donate Something AND/OR 2) Share this!”

Invite Your Friends

Invite all of your friends one by one to the fundraiser. Have 5,000 friends? Yes, you still need to invite all of them! This sounds like a daunting task, but its easier than you think!

Speed up invites by using a desktop browser to navigate to the fundraiser page. Open the invite dialog and you should see a list of all of 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 friend’s Invite button should now be highlighted. Press the space “Space” key to press that selected button. Then hit Tab and Space for the next friend. Continue to quickly press Tab and Space until you have cycled through all of your friends. If you pass up a friend accidentally you can hold “Shift” and press Tab to go backwards. This method is much faster than clicking. You can speed this process up even more by pre-loading your friends in the list by scrolling down and lazy loading them all before starting. Do you feel like a hacker now?

Points of Contact

You are going to need to contact people several times during the course of your fundraiser. Treat it like a campaign. You are running for the office of reaching your goal and you have to rely on your friends to get you there! Most of your donations will be from you personally interacting with people rather than people organically discovering your fundraiser on their timeline or through their notifications.

Initial Public Offering

As soon as you start your fundraiser, look through your recent Facebook Messenger interactions and send a generic message to everyone you talk with regularly. Something generic that sounds personal works great.

“Hey, I just started a birthday fundraiser and I don’t want people to think I can’t raise money so could u donate something so I at least have a head start? Love u!”

Venture Out

Facebook is not the only place you should go. Copy the link to your Fundraiser and text/whatsapp it to people, tweet it, share it on your snapchat story!

It’s THE Day

Leading up to your birthday/event you should have received a good deal of donations from your friends. Or at least signs of support, best wishes, Likes, Shares etc.

But now it is the big day and you are going to get lots of messages on your timeline from people wishing you ‘Good Luck’ or ‘Happy Birthday’ (Depending on why you set up your fundraiser).

One of the cool things Facebook does for the good of mankind is it automatically groups all of these timeline posts together so it doesn’t fill anyone’s news feed. Since all the posts aren’t seen, you can respond to them all with a generic message and link to the fundraiser without it filling everyone’s timeline with you commenting on everything!

You may also opt to go the more personal (seeming) route and send a message instead. Either way keep the message simple and generic but word it to seem personal.

“Hey thanks for the Happy Birthday J. Will you support my fundraiser giving what you can AND/OR sharing it. I’m so close to my goal and its for an amazing charity! Your the best :D, Lol [Insert Le Link Here]”

Post Updates

Post updates from time to time on your Facebook graciously thanking everyone who donated and updating on the progress toward the goal. Every time the fundraiser is mentioned, new people may become exposed to it. People will be glad to be making you happy and people will donate to make you happier.

Miss Fundraisiality

When your fundraiser is about 3 days from ending or if you reach your goal early, write a nice public message graciously thanking everyone for donating, reminding everyone about the amazing cause they donated to, and letting everyone know how happy they have made you by supporting you. You may yet get a few more donations after your speech.

Finally

Best of luck!!! We really hope you reach your fundraising goal. If you have any questions or queries, please give me a call on (022)43851 or email me at carla@aadi.ie