Facebook Challenges and Birthday Fundraising can open the door to a whole new stream of digital income and new supporters for your nonprofit.
But what exactly are Facebook Challenges and Birthday Fundraisers, and how can you turn these into a sustainable and successful new income stream?
In this webinar session, GivePanel’s Head of Strategy and Development in Australia, Danni Adam, does a deep-dive into how Facebook Challenges and Birthday Fundraisers can take your fundraising to a whole new level. Joined by Danni is Megan Maya, from one of GivePanel’s partners, More Strategic, and case study from Cure Brain Cancer Foundation, the first charity in Australia to start using GivePanel, and one of the first to run a Facebook Challenge.
What we'll cover:
- The ‘pain points’ and concerns around Facebook fundraising
- The Facebook Challenge Fundraising model
- The opportunities to reach new committed supporters
- An amazing case study from Cure Brain Cancer Foundation Australia
Watch the webinar highlights below, or scroll down to continue reading more insights from Danni and the GivePanel team.
Watch the webinar
Why Facebook Challenges and Birthday Fundraising?
If you get it right, the opportunities are huge and you can easily reach the over 16 million active Facebook users in Australia.
There’s also a powerful network effect, with fundraisers able to easily reach their existing donors (family and friends). And there’s huge potential for new audience acquisition, with 9 out of 10 fundraisers being new to your organization.
What are the ‘pain points’ and concerns around Facebook fundraising?
Despite the benefits, there are a few pain points to fundraising on Facebook, including:
- Lack of donor data & visibility
- Unsure how to steward Facebook Fundraisers to committed supporters
- Fear of saturation ‘too many virtual challenges’
- Confusion on if it replaces existing events
We are going to help you address these barriers here!
The Facebook Challenge Fundraising Model
Facebook Fundraisers are when people raise money via Facebook for their birthdays, in-memory, or for another special event. Fundraisers can be acquired organically, or recruited via ads. They can be promoted on charity websites as a ‘fundraise for us’ option, and like all Facebook Fundraising, Facebook Giving Tools must be activated.
On the other hand, Facebook Challenges are virtual events managed via Facebook. People are recruited via Facebook Ads and undertake a challenge in their own time – everything from doing 3,000 squats a day through to monthly knitting challenges.
This means lower acquisition costs, more fundraisers, and access to new audiences.
The opportunities to reach new committed supporters
Through Facebook Challenges and Birthday Fundraisers you can reach new communities, age groups and places that your in-person challenges may not. They also offer a new proposition for your ads, and brand reach beyond challenge participants (to their friends and family also).
Even if you're a charity that has a very wide reach in advertising, this is a nice way to give another string to your bow, and offers a new proposition that might attract people that your other adverts aren't able to reach. Facebook challenges are also a very untapped market in Australia and a new hook for ads.
Facebook Challenges are also a great way to grow your brand; because it's all centered around Facebook, your challenge participants are going to easily be able to promote your brand to their friends and family.
GivePanel can help with this; not only do we have a support team and Academy that can help guide you through, but our platform also has great reporting systems, which means you can track how all of your challenges are going.
You can see how many people registered for the event, and how many people have signed up and created fundraisers. There's also some new reporting which allows you to look at measurements including the average donation amount and the cost per fundraiser. Everything a professional fundraiser needs to make their challenges a success!
An amazing case study from Cure Brain Cancer Foundation Australia
What started as an organic opportunity, Birthday Fundraisers is becoming the backbone of Cure Brain Cancer Foundation’s community fundraising.
In November 2021, Cure Brain Cancer ran a ‘1500 Burpees in November’ challenge. A simple challenge concept and incredible group engagement helped raise over AU$250,000 for the organization.
So, how can you replicate their success with your nonprofit’s own fundraising activity? Here are Cure Brain Cancer Foundation's four key rules for running a successful Facebook Challenge:
- It’s all in the name
- Focus on the challenge itself in your ads
- The Custom Facebook Fundraiser feature is your friend
- Incentives are key
And their top tips for running a successful Facebook Challenge:
- Get set up as much as possible prior to the campaign
- Have a bulk of posts ready to go
- Engage your top fundraisers early on
- Don’t worry about overlaying on top of existing activity
- Be as planned as possible (especially resourcing)
- Make it fun!
Read the Cure Brain Cancer Foundation success story
If you want more insights from the Cure Brain Cancer Foundation team on how they found success with Facebook Challenges, read the success story on their 1500 Burpees in November Challenge.
Ready to explore Facebook Challenges and Birthday Fundraising?
Take a look at our guide to planning the perfect Facebook Fundraising Challenge in 2022. There, you can download our free Calculator Tool, enter what you think you can spend on resourcing your Facebook Challenge, and generate meaningful ROI projections.
Book a GivePanel Demo
Book your 30 minute demo with one of our awesome Facebook Fundraising specialists today to see if GivePanel could help you supercharge your Facebook fundraising.
More resources
- How to target Facebook ads to potential Birthday fundraisers
- How thanking your Facebook fundraisers can double your acquisition efforts
- Facebook fundraising benchmarks: What should your charity be aiming for?
- Measure the Success of Your Facebook Challenge
- Change the Game with Facebook Challenge Events
