"Show me the money." That’s what nonprofits are asking of Facebook Causes pages. The Washington Post did a great article today that reinforces the value of nonprofits' using email as a core fundraising strategy rather then social networks. The numbers in the Post report, which were taken directly from Facebook Causes' own published statistics, show overwhelmingly that most nonprofits are poorly served by trying to use Facebook Causes for fundraising. Almost two years after Facebook Causes was launched, the tool still does not seem to be working for fundraising, except for a tiny group of nonprofits. Even for this fortunate few, the results they achieved on Facebook were reportedly dwarfed by the fundraising results that good old email campaigns and other tried-and-true methods achieve for nonprofits.
This same phenomenon caught our attention when Frogloop published the Long, Long Tail of Facebook Causes two years ago, analyzing the results of the (at that time) newly launched Facebook Causes
application. It seemed too early to tell, but then, when we checked back about a year later, we found this interesting and profound story about the nonprofit group "Save Darfur." This organization had grown to be one of the largest Facebook Causes, with over 1 million members. But it took Save Darfur over a year to raise about $28,000 from those Facebook Cause "friends," -- and almost two years to raise their current total of $78,000. Contrast that with a single email campaign that Save Darfur did in June of 2007 - with the help of M+R Strategic Services - to about a million of their email supporters. In only 10 days, Save Darfur raised more than $415,000 through an email series.
While social media tools like Facebook are still useful for helping to build your brand and spreading your message, just don’t expect to raise significant money through these channels.
Ever wonder what the ROI is in using social media to fundraise? Check out Frogloop’s Social Network ROI calculator. The calculator is a great tool that will give you realistic expectations about the costs and benefits of this kind of fundraising quest. Bear in mind, however, that there's a whole other cost that the calculator does not quantify, namely the Opportunity Cost of spending time on one thing, such as Facebook Causes, instead of investing these same resources into another, more effective strategy (e.g. Email campaigns). That's arguably the biggest cost of all.
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