How your nonprofit can prepare for Instagram Donate

There is much excitement about Instagram Donate! The Instagram Donation Sticker for Stories is now available in the US, and here at GivePanel we are super excited about it.

If you haven’t started using it yet, or you’re based outside of the US you’ll want to start preparing to use this amazing feature, so we thought we’d share some useful information that you should know.

What exactly is it?

The Instagram Donation Sticker will allow nonprofits and their supporters to raise money through Stories. In order to use it, your nonprofit must first be registered with Facebook’s Giving Tools so if you haven’t done this yet, do it now! Not sure if you’re registered or not? Here’s how you can tell.

Once registered, you’ll need to link your Instagram account to your Facebook account and switch to an Instagram Business profile (if you haven’t already done this). It’s worth doing this anyway because you get analytics with a business profile so you can see who your audience is, how many visits your profile got as well as which posts got the most reach and engagement. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to link your accounts and switch to a business profile.

When you’re ready, create a Story by uploading a photo then go to Stickers and choose or search for the Donation Sticker.

Here’s an example from Save the Children who are raising money for the border crisis in the US.

Will it be free for nonprofits?

Yes! As with Facebook Donate and Fundraisers, there will be no transaction fee, meaning that nonprofits will get 100% of the donation.

Is there a limit to how much someone can donate?

The minimum donation is $5 and the maximum is $2,500 per donation, however people can donate multiple times to one fundraiser.

How will I know if people have donated to my fundraiser?

There are three ways to check this.

1. Swipe up on your Story where you’ll be able to view the total amount raised as well as individual donation amounts.
2. You will get an activity notification when someone has made a donation to your fundraiser. However, if you have more than 10k followers, you will only receive notifications from people you are following who are also following you. As a Story only lasts 24 hours, you’ll receive a ‘total amount raised’ notification when it expires BUT only if it raised more than $0. You can however extend the duration of your fundraiser by adding it as a ‘highlight’. When you want to end the fundraiser (particularly if it’s for a time-sensitive campaign), you’ll need to delete the Story in the highlight.
3. Donations will be included in your existing donation reports (that you download from Facebook), under the source column and labelled as ‘ig_donation_sticker’.

How will our donations on Instagram be paid to us?

When you reach the $100 or equivalent minimum donation payout amount, it becomes eligible for a payout. If your fundraiser raises less than $100 the funds will roll over until you reach $100 (through setting up another fundraiser or by having a supporter start one for you.). It then takes 2 weeks to process the payout and will occur bi-weekly.