Do you remember Facebook Causes?
It has had evolved in many different ways over the years. It was initially integrated into Facebook in such a way that it was fairly easy to give to your favorite nonprofits and charities using Facebook Causes. For the past several years, however, Facebook Causes has faded away and most nonprofit organizations now find Facebook more difficult to engage their following, as reaching your own Facebook Page fans now comes at a price.
However, Facebook has now made a new option available for select nonprofits to accept donations directly on their Facebook Page and Newsfeed posts.
The New Facebook Donate Now Button
Announced this past December (2013), Facebook has added a great new way for Facebook users to donate to some of their favorite charities. Not only can it be done directly on an organizations Facebook Page, the ability for users to give on the go and impulsively respond to Facebook Newsfeed posts has been added:
“When people click “Donate Now” they can choose the amount, enter their payment information, and immediately donate to that cause. They also have the option to share the nonprofit’s post with their friends. We hope this will help increase donations as people encourage their friends to donate to the causes that are important to them.”
Here are the organizations that now accept donations using Facebook as it has initially been rolled out:
So what about your nonprofit, church or ministry?
It’s unsure just how fast this will be rolled out. There is currently a vetting process, and I am sure there will continue to be so. Honestly, I would be surprised if very many small organizations, especially churches and ministries, will ever be accepted — although I hope so!
“As we developed this feature, we partnered with a few nonprofits and will make it available to more organizations soon. Any nonprofit group that is interested in tapping into this new feature on Facebook can fill out the Donate interest form in the Facebook Help Center.”
It’s the smaller organizations that would benefit from this the most, so I hope the vetting system doesn’t discriminate against small organizations.
If you would like to try and have this new feature added to your nonprofit’s Facebook Page, be sure to fill out the Facebook Donate Interest form. There isn’t much to fill-out, so it should only take a few minutes at the most.
I look forward to see if Facebook sticks to this new feature, it could be a real game-changer for nonprofits who have an active Facebook following.
Joanna says
It’s a good idea, but unfortunately I suspect how infrequently facebook shows posts in the newsfeed from pages will cancel out a lot of its potential
Eric Dye says
This is true. :-/