How to target Facebook Ads to potential Birthday Fundraisers
For many of our GivePanel customers, Birthday Fundraisers generate over 90% of their Facebook income. Naturally, the question arises: “How do I get more people to set up a Birthday Fundraiser for us?”
Since Facebook notifies users to start a fundraiser, you can use a targeted Facebook Ad to achieve the same result.
Here are a few examples of Birthday Ads we’ve seen:
🎯 Choosing the Right Audience
We recommend starting with warm audiences. These supporters are ready and willing to fundraise for you. They already know, like, and trust your organization.
Your ideal warm audiences include:
- Existing donors
- Existing sign-ups (e.g., email list)
- People who have visited your website in the last 180 days
- People who have engaged with your Facebook content in the last 180 days
- People who like your page
- Friends of people who like your page
Setting Up Your Ad Sets
You should add the first four custom audiences (donors, sign-ups, website visitors, and engagers) into one ad set. However, create a separate ad set for those who like your page. This is because adding Page likers to the custom audience group would dramatically narrow your targeting potential.
If your ad campaign doesn’t work for these warm audiences, it won’t work for colder audiences (people who don’t know you well). Keep your audience volume manageable; otherwise, the audience may be too small after you apply the birthday filters.
🗓️ Filtering by Birthday
You have two powerful filter options within Facebook Ads Manager:
- Filter Option 1 – Upcoming birthday: Search the detailed targeting section for “Upcoming birthday.” This filters your audience to include those who have a “birthday in 1 week.”
- Filter Option 2 – Birthday in [Month]: Search the detailed targeting section for “Birthday in…” You can then filter your audiences by those who have birthdays in a specific month.
Which Option Should I Use?
You can use both options to reach the right audiences at the right time:
- Filter 1 (Upcoming Birthday): I recommend using this for an “always on” ad set. Run this ad all the time. Use a few different ad creatives in the ad set. You can then see which one performs best over time.
- Filter 2 (Birthday in [Month]): Use this filter when you are running a specific campaign tied to a date. For example, run ads during an Awareness Week. We saw great results using this method with the charity Sands.
Ad campaigns still have some limitations. However, if you already see organic success with Birthday fundraising, throwing budget behind paid ads is definitely worthwhile!
Of course, before driving more Birthday Fundraisers, you must ensure you can handle the data and the thanking process. In other words, you should be using GivePanel. Book in for a demo today!
📞 Book a Demo & Related Resources
Want to find out how GivePanel can help you maximize your Facebook fundraising data and stewardship?
- Book a Demo: https://givepanel.com/demo/
- Facebook Birthday Fundraising: How do they work and can you get more of them
- Facebook Birthday Fundraisers: How to generate more fundraisers for free
- Case study: How one charity increased birthday fundraising income by 400% with Facebook Ads