Can Facebook work for you and your cause?

I love Facebook. On a personal level I have connected with friends who I had lost touch with, friends who are once again in my life and whom I not only chat with on Facebook but call and visit now. It took me a while to get comfortable on Facebook with my personal account before I could take the jump into a page for our non-profit. As many staff, volunteers, board and donors of Boulder County AIDS Project that are on Facebook it just made sense to create an agency page.

The first piece of advice I can offer is to make sure that you create a non-profit page, and not a group page. When you have a non-profit page, anyone listed as an administrator can post using the agency name/logo. It looks more official that way with posts. The group page doesn't allow that.

Before you decide to create a Facebook page for your group, make sure that you have the time and can make the commitment to actually use it. I use ours to promote events, to promote an urgent need or an action alert, and to let readers know when one of our clients has passed away. I post links to information regarding HIV/AIDS and fundraising, and try to engage our readers into some type of action.

And all of this is free!

I would also like you to know that you can fundraise on Facebook through their giving program. We do not do this as the fee is a lot (for us) and we pay no fees with our online giving setup with Giving First.

The thing I love the most about Facebook is that people following you WANT to follow you and you can get news out to peole who are interested in an instant. We are currently promoting our upcoming Humongous Book and Media Sale using Facebook and the response is great.

Speaking of our event, from your non-profit profile you can create events and invite those following you plus any or all of your Facebook friends. Then those friends can invite their friends. Before you know it, hundreds of people know about your event.

There is a lot involved with Facebook so please take the time to have a look at whether or not this would work for you, knowing it does take a time commitment. For us it's an incredible asset to our fundraising plan and to our plan of staying in touch with people who care about our mission.