Facebook fundraising results from Givepanel’s charity clients
Howard Lake | 15 April 2021 | News
Facebook fundraising specialist GivePanel reports that 157 of its charity and nonprofit clients from the UK, Ireland and USA have raised over $100m (£72 million) through campaigns using Facebook’s fundraising tools during 2019 and 2020.
Overall they generated 4.5 million donations from over 850,000 Facebook fundraiser campaigns.
Givepanel, the platform that helps charities manage their Facebook fundraisers and, just as importantly, access and manage their data, have published their clients’ successes and lessons learned in ‘The Facebook Fundraising Benchmark Report’.
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The findings follow Facebook’s announcement last month that its fundraising tools, available to individuals, charities and businesses, have been used by over seven million people in the UK to donate to charity since they were introduced in 2017.
Birthday fundraisers
Birthday fundraisers were still the most common type of Facebook fundraiser campaign set up in 2020. The mean value grew by 21% from £59 in 2019 to £71 in 2020.
In memory fundraisers
Some charities benefited from an increase the number of In Memory and Tribute fundraisers, in addition to their birthday and non-birthday fundraisers. These fundraisers have the highest amount raised per fundraiser at £536 in 2020. This was an increase of 84% on 2019 figures.
Facebook Challenges
The Facebook Fundraising Benchmark Report from GivePanel shows there has been a large increase in non-birthday/ event fundraisers in 2020, mostly down to the growth in the new Facebook Challenges model. Non-birthday/events accounted for 55% of all funds raised in 2020 compared to just 17% the year before. In addition these event fundraisers raise on average double the total amount raised by a birthday fundraiser – $98 v $217.
Nick Burne, CEO and Founder of GivePanel said:
“The biggest change in the social fundraising landscape is the adoption of the Facebook Challenges model. With many GivePanel nonprofit customers now making over a million pounds per challenge and many smaller nonprofits making more than six figures, we knew 2020 was going to be a strong year for Facebook fundraising due to the very different world we are now operating in”.
The challenge of stewardship
One of the key issues with Facebook fundraising has been stewardship. Nevertheless Givepanel clients found that engaging with Facebook fundraisers on their page increased the average raised by 23%. In addition, charities reported having more success in acquiring fundraisers’ contact details using GivePanel’s tools, with some obtaining data for well over half their fundraisers.
National differences
Irish charities and supporters came out on top in this report, generating the highest average amount raised per fundraiser, raising on average 18% more than UK and US nonprofits.
However, the highest average gift value is consistently from the donors in the USA.
Sector differences
Nonprofits in the Children & Young People and Hospice sectors experienced the greatest growth in 2020 and international charities were the only sector to experience a decline in Facebook Fundraising in 2020.
Nick Burne added:
“We have been keeping a close eye on the data we shared in our report throughout 2020. We could see some really interesting stats emerging and wanted to share it with the nonprofit community.
“In many ways Facebook is the perfect fundraising platform giving nonprofits the reach and depth of community, and these, together with the ease of fundraising tools like GivePanel, make for a powerful combination”.
Webinar
GivePanel and THINK Consulting are presenting a free webinar where they will explore the findings of their first Facebook Fundraising Benchmark Report. All registrants will receive a copy of the benchmark study.
It takes place on 20 April from 4-5pm GMT.
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.