The 411 on
GoodUnited &
Social Media Fundraising

Social media fundraising is when people use social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter to raise money for a cause.

It's a way to reach a lot of people quickly and easily. People create posts or campaigns online to tell others about their cause and ask for donations.

The idea is to use the wide reach and easy sharing of social media to get more support and funds from a large number of people.

While social media fundraising is not a new concept (remember the ice bucket challenge?), the technology that supports it has evolved, making it easier for nonprofits to jump in and take advantage.

As technology has evolved, it’s provided ways for fundraising efforts to be automated, allowing nonprofits to engage with their supporters in real-time with little impact on resources.

Similar to how website and email revenue is attributed as different fundraising channels, nonprofits typically attribute revenue from social media separately.

Revenue from social media can take a few forms, such as a birthday fundraisers, one-off gifts, or Challenges on Facebook.

Regardless of the method, revenue from GoodUnited is directly attributed through proactive messaging journeys to your subscribers.

Here's the best way to think of it. What email is to your website today, GoodUnited will be to social media fundraising tomorrow.

In the context of messaging platforms, such as Facebook Messenger, a subscriber is someone who has agreed to receive direct messages, updates, and notifications from a nonprofit.

Subscribers can be seen as followers, and typically receive relevant, personalized messages and calls to action.

Here’s the TL;DR on this one:

• Ensure your nonprofit is eligible (Your organization must be a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit in good standing with the IRS)
• Enroll in Facebook Payments
• Apply for Facebook's nonprofit program
  

Oh yeah, we also wrote a book on this one in case you want all the 411 on this.

Yes, you still need GoodUnited.

Organic fundraisers on Facebook are only a small part of the larger social media fundraising strategy.

If you’re posting content and building a community of unknown supporters, GoodUnited helps convert that community into named subscribers to cultivate and monetize.

From there, nonprofits are using Facebook Messenger to build a more personalized experience through messaging at scale, sidestepping bandwidth issues and focusing on what matters most - meeting their supporters where they are at.

The amount of bandwidth and resources a nonprofit needs to effectively run fundraising efforts can be met with one of our favorite responses: it depends.

If you’re already posting content and building community on Facebook, very little additional effort is needed.

If you’re not actively building a presence on Facebook, we recommend that nonprofits take time to focus on building a social media strategy before engaging with GoodUnited.

Unlike other online donation platforms, Facebook does not charge a platform fee for donations made to charitable organizations.

When a donor makes a contribution through Facebook, 100% of the donation goes directly to the chosen nonprofit organization. Facebook does not charge a platform fee for donations, so all funds raised go towards the intended cause.

For most nonprofits, Facebook fundraising (and the revenue that comes with it) seems to happen without insight.

Free money is great, but most nonprofits don’t know why they got a check from Meta or how they can take charge and control this revenue source.

Many nonprofits have seen a decline in birthday fundraising because:

A. It’s been around for seven years and like everything, it degrades over time. 

B. More nonprofits than ever are onboarding to giving tools increasing competition to be the beneficiary of that birthday fundraiser.

While organic fundraising is great, GoodUntied empowers your organization to take control. Through GoodUnited, you can finally drive predictable and sustainable revenue in your supporters preferred social channels and no longer be at the whims of an algorithm few, if any, understand or can control.

GoodUnited is Meta’s first Social Impact partner.

We meet regularly with their Development team and continue to invest in our partnership on behalf of our nonprofit partners, advocating for their requests and surfacing concerns.

When changes or updates to Facebook Giving tools arise, we're able to directly connect with the Facebook Social Impact team to understand what, if any, impact the changes will have on nonprofits fundraising with GoodUnited.

With this insight, we provide detailed updates to our nonprofit partners through our blog, social media feeds, and through webinars.

GoodUnited isn’t a fancy AI-powered bot, but rather a conversational messaging platform that helps nonprofits meet their supporters where they are at.

Using technology and human insight gained through seven+ years of Facebook fundraising experience, nonprofits utilize GoodUnited to drive the acquisition of supporters, build meaningful revenue driving relationships, and grow predictable revenue in social media.

While there are a few similarities between GoodUnited and other tools, there’s one major difference: GoodUnited focuses on helping nonprofit fundraise on social media.

That's it. that's our thing. And no one else is doing it like us.