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Mike Morris
June 14, 2021

How to Change the Game with Facebook Challenge Events

🔥 Facebook Challenge Events: The New Blueprint for Digital Income

Would you like to consistently grow your digital income? Do you want to create a new, high-volume fundraising channel? Are you hearing about huge successes on Facebook but unsure how to achieve them?

Jill O’Herlihy chats to Amy Bowers. Amy discusses the incredible results achieved when you activate Facebook challenges. They share a simple, local strategy that works even during lockdowns.

They discuss the core problem with Facebook fundraising and how to solve it. They also cover why Facebook groups are the secret sauce. You will learn how to get a huge return on Facebook ad spend. Crucially, they explain how not to trip yourself up by using technology your supporters don’t want.

This talk was given at Fundraising Online 2021.

🎙️ About the Speakers

Jill O’Herlihy is Head of Customer Happiness at GivePanel. Previously, she worked at Mental Health Ireland. She discovered a passion for Facebook fundraising there. In fact, she raised over one million from birthday fundraisers in 2019. Her background is in digital PR.

Amy Bowers is Chapter Events Fundraising Manager at the Bone Cancer Research Trust. She manages the charity’s challenge events program. Specifically, she leads on Facebook challenges. She helped deliver six Facebook challenges since August 2020. These events raised over £2.5 million.

The Bone Cancer Research Trust is a team of 20 based in Leeds, UK. They are a leading charity fighting primary bone cancer. They focus on research, information, awareness, and support. They ran their first Facebook challenge in August 2020. This had a huge impact on their income. Over the last few years, they have worked to diversify their income streams. Facebook challenges offered a fantastic opportunity for this.

The charity hit its first million in 2019. However, at the start of 2020, they anticipated a loss of over £60,000 to £80,000 due to the pandemic. But by the end of the year, they had raised £2.7 million. They achieved their most successful year to date. This represented a $64\%$ year-on-year increase. Facebook challenges accounted for a large part of this success.

💡 The Old Way vs. The New Way

The Flawed Traditional Model

The old digital fundraising way often started with a complicated campaign idea. Maybe you’d hire a creative agency. Typically, the user journey began with a very long sign-up form. You always charged an entry fee for challenge events. You would use a standalone fundraising platform. This required people to create a username and a password. Then, you needed to promote the challenge. This meant starting a brand new Facebook page and running a separate social media campaign. Ultimately, this entire process cost a lot of money.

The Efficient Facebook Challenge Model

Now, we have a new way. First, invent a simple concept. Supporters must understand it in under two seconds. Next, get prospects excited before they decide to get involved. Keep the user on Facebook for the whole experience. That is where they started, and that is where they feel comfortable. Make signing up quick and ridiculously easy. Save costs on expensive designers building microsites; just set up a Facebook fundraising page. Crucially, ensure the user’s friends and family see their fundraising pages so they can donate. Gather a connected community in a Facebook group. Finally, use simple Facebook ads to drive success. You need no other promotion.

This new way raises so much money because Facebook built a great ecosystem. It is an ecosystem they did not even realize they had! They provide Facebook groups for community, Facebook fundraisers for non-profits, and ads for acquisition. We have pulled all of these together to create a perfect ecosystem for the Facebook challenge. It requires hard work, but you will reap the rewards.

🎣 Why Facebook Challenges and The Hook

The Value of the Model

You might ask yourself if you should do these challenges. I think they are an excellent medium-term fundraising solution. I say medium-term because they face a risk of saturation; more charities adopt this model over time. But then again, this gives you the opportunity to be innovative with your challenges. The model has proven its effectiveness, and we have seen great success.

Our final fundraising event last November was a 2,000 burpees challenge. No other challenge event has ever come close to the income raised during this one. In fact, it raised more than all of our income streams combined in 2017. Facebook challenges also offer an excellent acquisition model. We had 12,000 members in our 2,000 burpees group. The majority of these were new supporters. Moreover, one-third of them opted in for further communications.

Developing a Simple Hook

To start a successful Challenge, develop a simple hook. We must move from the old, complicated way to this new, simple model. The hook must be clear.

The challenge must get supporters doing the same activity over the same timeframe. This helps build that fantastic group community. Furthermore, clear-cut details make it easier to thank supporters from an admin perspective. Do not overcomplicate the challenge. It should be “X challenge in X month,” like “2,000 burpees in February.” Simple concepts are easy to understand when scrolling through a newsfeed.

Another key thing about the hook is the focus. The challenge itself is primary; it is about the activity and getting fit. As charities, we focus on the cause, but the cause is secondary with these challenges. You get huge numbers of supporters by focusing on the activity itself. Try to picture yourself as a supporter: “Oh, 10,000 steps a day? I need to be doing that!” It is about engaging with the person first. The next step is creating the community. This is where the hard work starts.

🤝 Creating the Community: The Secret Sauce

Facebook groups offer the perfect opportunity to create a community. They are the glue that holds the challenge together. This is where we engage with and support participants. Also, we post updates on fundraising totals here. Consequently, supporters must have a positive and memorable experience. This motivates them to fundraise and makes them want to return.

Engagement and Retention

Moderator Management

Note that monitoring groups takes a lot of time. You do not want to stress your moderators. We monitor groups in shifts during the day: 9-to-5, 7-to-9, and 10-to-6 on the weekend. Scrolling through Facebook is very demanding. We ensure we have cover and that we alternate shifts. This provides a fresh pair of eyes. The moderator remains motivated to comment on posts. You cannot expect one person to do all of that; they would not last long.

We were focusing on community participation. We saw many inspirational stories. People will share their reasons for taking on these challenges organically. You will see people in fancy dress and roping in friends and family. The comments show how supportive people are. They genuinely love being part of these groups.

Joining the Challenge

Something that helps the monitoring staff is taking part in the challenge (if possible). I did the 2,000 burpees in November challenge. This gives you an additional thing to bond over. Supporters feel like you are in it with them, every burpee of the way. It makes them feel part of the team. You are one of them, not just an admin. This creates a really nice connection.

🎯 Growing Numbers with Facebook Lead Ads

I had no formal Facebook training. I very much figured it out as I went along. I had done ads before, but this approach felt very different. We used little-to-no targeting. We selected a geographical location and an age range. That was it. We included no behavior or interest targeting. We also used a variety of creative and copy. We inputted several versions of both. Consequently, we let the Facebook algorithms figure out which combinations would get the best response.

We did try using the dynamic ads function. However, we found tracking performance more difficult. We reverted back to manual ad input. Critically, you need no fancy, professional photos. We use our team members or family members for our photos. I have done this countless times. I gave my husband a t-shirt and said, “Come on, we’re doing a photo shoot.”

You will notice all of our challenge photos feature our t-shirt. We give away free t-shirts when people register. This is an incentive that encourages people to click “sign up.” Ultimately, they end up in the group and fundraising for us. Your free incentive should always feature in your ads. We tried stock images, but anything with our branding or t-shirts far outperformed them. I always opt for images rather than videos, as they are easier to consume. Images are really eye-catching when scrolling through Facebook. But, if we have a boomerang or a video we want to try, we will test them.

🔄 The Supporter Journey and Process Tweaks

The Traditional Journey

Let’s review the supporter journey. They see the ads on Facebook. A promise of a free t-shirt and a fitness challenge draws them in. They fill out the lead generation form on Facebook. Facebook auto-fills this form in most cases; it takes literally two clicks. Then, it is complete. They are directed to join the Facebook group. Once in the group, they see a welcome post. This post highlights the steps needed to register for the t-shirt. Finally, they receive encouragement to set up a Facebook fundraiser.

These are the steps we used for our first two challenges. This represents the traditional approach.

Tweaking the Process

We tweaked our process slightly for the following challenges. We wanted to increase the group members-to-fundraisers conversion percentage. Therefore, we changed the first steps for setting up a Facebook fundraiser. We updated it by using a one-click link from GivePanel. This allowed supporters to set up their fundraiser instantly. We then encouraged them to use the invite function. They invited friends and family to their fundraisers and kickstarted their own giving. We included this one-click link in the welcome post and on the supporters’ fundraising pages. This post also included the registration sign-up link for their free t-shirt.

By doing it this way, we saw a $20\%$ increase in conversion from group members to fundraisers. The free t-shirt promise encourages people to set up their fundraiser. It also reduced the number of duplicate requests we saw. This happened because the registration link was not openly available for everyone to click on. It reduced sending t-shirts to people who would not set up a fundraiser, which improved our ROI. Also, we posted that initial welcome message on the supporters’ fundraising pages within 24 hours. Consequently, we engaged with them from the very start.

We recommend trying the original way a few times first. Once you gain some expertise and trial some challenges, you can start testing these things. We love hearing how people are doing things differently.

💰 Recent Results and Getting Started

Incredible Financial Results

In one of our recent challenges, we raised more than our highest income-generating traditional challenge, the London Marathon, had ever raised. This happened all within three weeks of ads going live. Not to mention, the ROI was much better. We were blown away. Money started coming in before the challenge month even began. We saw the first peak at the start of the challenge. Then, on day one of the challenge, we saw another peak. This is because of different types of fundraisers. Some people do what they are told right away. Others, like me, join the group but do not set up a fundraiser until the first day of the challenge. Every challenge spikes on the first day and spikes on the last day—that is consistent.

For our February challenge, we ended up raising over £500,000. We had 7,500 group members and sent out 3,000 t-shirts. We also had over 2,000 new people we call “spotters.” Another 2,000 people opted into further marketing from us. Now, we can target these 2,000-plus people. We can bring them on another journey, like legacy, regular giving, or volunteering.

The Recruitment Funnel

For Facebook ads, you should aim for a £2–£3 cost per lead. These ads lead users to the sign-up form, which then leads users to the Facebook group. You get around $80\%$ of these people into the Facebook group. Around $50\%$ will fill out the form. We use a GivePanel form, but you can use Google Forms or others. There are countless types of forms that can get people engaged and incentivized. This is the funnel that people will follow.

Starting Small

Obviously, we want non-profits to make money when putting in all of this effort. We advise that you start with a small pilot first. You might be tempted to say, “I have 10,000 t-shirts; let’s do a challenge for 10,000.” But we recommend against this for your first one.

Start with small targets. Ensure you can manage it correctly before you scale it up. Test it over four months.

Four months is the timeframe you need to be looking at.

✅ Considerations Before Kick Off

Should you do a Facebook challenge? If you answer yes to the following questions, it’s time for a serious internal conversation:

Challenges thrive where the communities are. Community is the glue. It is what people crave right now: connection. Go into any non-profit Facebook page and look for a challenge group. If they have one, pop in and look around—you will see they are lovely places to be. Therefore, fill up your group with Facebook lead ads and get them fundraising!

🔗 Watch the Video & Get Started