The Growth of Facebook Challenges (results from the inside)

Since we embarked on Facebook Challenges in late 2019, the growth we’ve seen from this new way of fundraising has been incredible. I wanted to share some of the data so you can see how explosive this is and how it’s happening right now, under your nose. 

Give me the big numbers please…

So far, GivePanel tools have helped non-profits raise $42,666,329 (that’s £30 million or €35m) from Facebook Challenges.

This is measured from when our new Facebook group forms were launched in early 2020, so it’s missing some data previous to this.

How much do they raise on average?

We have medium and large size non-profits on GivePanel that raise a lot. But we also have very small organisations who raise a lot too! 

• The average Facebook Challenge on GivePanel raises over $350k (£250k / €290k)
• We have done 84 Facebook Challenges that have raised over $100,000
• 64% of all our Facebook Challenges have raised over $100,000
• The top 20 Facebook Challenges have raised an average of $1.16m (£819k / €951k)
• The top 10 Facebook Challenges have raised an average of $1.56m (£1.1m / €1.28m)
• The top Challenge raised $2.87m! 

Most of our Facebook Challenges so far have been in UK and Ireland which are smaller markets that the United States. Also on the whole smaller charities because larger charities are slower to adopt new things. 

As our US non-profits and large UK charities start to adopt this model (which they are, big time!) and we continue to learn how to scale it, I expect to see the first $10m challenge and significant higher average top 10s. 

How much do Facebook Challenges cost?

Unfortunately, we don’t have all the data on costs in GivePanel and it varies depending on what non-profits do in house and how much they use our agency partners.

However, we know that average Return on Facebook Ad spend is around 9.4 and without costs of physical in-person events or payment fees, the ROI is MUCH higher than other types of event fundraising. 

Why do Facebook Challenges work so well?

Honestly? Lots of little things (that we can teach you) go into making Challenges VERY different when it comes to results.

All these little things are small tweaks from the way event fundraising has worked in the past. Many of them are counter-intuitive but they work! 

The over-arching theme is that Facebook Challenge focus on tapping into what the supporter wants and convenience.

Is it over? Uh… no.

The question I get all the time is, “how long will it last – is it not saturated yet?”

Please hear me on this – there are less than 80 charities in total that have run Challenges on GivePanel. There are 10s of thousands of charities that SHOULD be running Facebook Challenges.

There are 2.4 billion people on Facebook, Messenger and Instagram. So this is still early. VERY early.

How do I find out more?

If you want to find out more about Challenges, the best place to start is probably a video I did here.

You should also check out our blog on how to plan the perfect Challenge, as well as some of our awesome cases studies. 

You can grab a free session with the team at GivePanel any time you want here.