Facebook supporters are amazingly valuable for charities of all sizes. Here are the 9 types of Facebook supporters that you need to engage with.
Anyone who supports your cause with a donation or fundraises for you through Facebook is a star! But some stars shine more brightly than others. In other words, not every supporter is created equal and with limited time and resource, it’s important to spend time thanking and nurturing the ones that are of greater value to your cause. So who should you prioritise?
I recently presented with Jill O’Herlihy of Mental Health Ireland at the IFC in Holland. One of the topics we covered was who to prioritise and thank. We explained that there are many different types of Facebook supporters and not all of them have the same value to your organisation. Below is a handy image from our presentation to see what action to take with each supporter.
In this post we will go through each type of supporter and how you can and should approach stewarding them.
1. Supporters who donate their Birthday
We believe right now Facebook Birthday Fundraisers are the most important supporters. Many of them are new to your organisation. The best way to thank them is by posting a ‘thank you’ message on their Fundraiser wall. We have a messaging strategy that you might find useful. You can also use GivePanel to support you with thanking your fantastic fundraisers as well as to collect their data.
2. Supporters who set up a fundraiser (non-Birthday)
Like Birthday fundraisers these are very important supporters too. You will want to know why they have set up a fundraiser (e.g. if it was for an event) and record that information in GivePanel. You can message them on their Facebook fundraising page and use GivePanel to acquire their data.
3. Supporters who donate to an individual’s fundraiser
These donors are already asked to sign up to your email when they make a Facebook donation. See picture below.
They must actively tick this box for their email to appear in GivePanel. If you do have their email it shows that they really must want to hear more from you.
You should create a list of these people in your email tool and email them some welcome emails as soon as possible.
Beyond this we really do not recommend trying to contact them (e.g. by posting comments on their donations on the individual's fundraiser page). Here's a useful article of 5 reasons you should not contact the donors of Facebook fundraisers.
4. Supporters who donate to your Facebook Page Fundraiser
These donors are also asked to sign up to your email when they make a Facebook donation. So ensure that you download their email addresses from Facebook or GivePanel to email them. You will also want to regularly post thank you messages (including images and videos) to your Page Fundraiser to thank them and to ask them to invite their friends and family to support the page fundraiser too.
5. Supporters who donate to your Facebook Page Post
These donors are also asked to sign up to your email when they make a Facebook donation. So ensure that you download their email addresses from Facebook or GivePanel to email them. You can make comments on the post to thank your Facebook fundraisers in general, but other than this there is not a lot you can do.
6. Supporters who donate to your Facebook Page Donate Button
Facebook Page Donate Button donors are also asked to sign up to your email when they make a Facebook donation. So ensure that you download their email addresses from Facebook or GivePanel to email them. The bad news is there is nothing else you can do to steward these wonderful donors. The good news is that there is a very small amount of them. Not many people will donate to you this way so in the end it's not a massive problem.
7. Supporters who donate to you via Instagram
Instagram donors are also asked to sign up to your email when they make a donation. So ensure that you download their email addresses from Facebook or GivePanel to email them. Unfortunately, there isn't anything else you can do to steward Instagram Donate donors at the moment. ☹️
8. Supporters who add your Donate Button to a Facebook post
You can now see these supporters in GivePanel and steward them with our new Donate Button Posts feature. As explained in our Donate Button Posts feature blog, one nonprofit (within two minutes of first using this new feature) identified a potential celebrity ambassador who had hundreds of thousands of followers and had raised a significant amount of money for their charity.
9. Supporters who donate to your Donate Button when an individual adds it to their Facebook post
Similar to supporters who donate to an individual's fundraiser. They get asked to receive your emails but beyond that, they really are supporters of their friend or loved one – not necessarily you.
In summary, of the 9 types of Facebook supporters, the ones that you should prioritise and nurture are the people who set up Birthday fundraisers and those who set up other fundraisers for your cause as they have actively chosen to support you.
Still finding Facebook fundraising really time intensive? We can help with that! Book a demo today to see how we can help you leverage the power of Facebook’s Giving Tools.
