Fundraisers: Don’t Become Overly-Reliant on Facebook

This is probably a little cliche, but I wanna talk about Facebook for a sec. I talk with people every day who ask me about Facebook integrations - can we pull in Likes? How about Donations? Comments? 

But when I ask who is using Twitter, I get silence most of the time. LinkedIn? Similar. 

One person I spoke with put it pretty succinctly: “most of our donors are older and are on Facebook so that’s where we spend our time”. 

Oh. OK. So I guess we’re over the mythical millennial donor now? 

(I will NOT be making the argument that you should chase donors on every new social media platform forever and ever and ever and ever and…)

Here’s the problem with Facebook: people are leaving it. A lot. Data doesn’t tell us conclusively where they are going, but last quarter was their slowest growth ever and anecdotally I can tell you a fair number of people my age (40’s. ish.) are leaving. It doesn’t really matter why people are leaving, just know that they are.

I am not arguing that Twitter or LinkedIn or Tik Tok or whatever is the place you should invest your efforts because I have no idea what’s next.

As in many arenas in life, diversification may be a good idea. Try out some different streams and see if something else sticks. And just because it doesn’t stick doesn’t mean it won’t stick tomorrow (or in six months).

(wow. That sentence has a triple-negative. Sometimes I amaze even myself)

Better yet, take some of that time, energy and possibly money you’re investing in FB and throw it at… personal contacts with donors. Take time to find out what they’re interested in and then get creative with how they can support what excites them. You could even thank them on FB if that’s their preferred channel and they would like that. 

Don’t ignore FB specifically and Social Media in general. But sustainable fundraising is all about relationships and most experts agree FB is not great for our relationships.

So why would it be different for nonprofits?