Fundraising for Causes on Facebook

For as long as there’s been a Facebook people have found ways to use it to drum up support for a cause. Virtually every feature has been co-opted at one point or another for causes both serious and silly. People changed their profile pictures to a photo of their school mascot long before Facebook made it easy to put a temporary frame around your profile pic. Anyone who has participated in a fundraising effort like Team in Training has often reached out to their Facebook network for donations and support.

In this way, fundraising on Facebook is nothing new, but the tools now available make it much easier to get support from your friends for any sort of cause.

You might learn about fundraisers from an invite or see that one of your friends has created or donated to a fundraiser in your News Feed.

Much like any other post you might see in your News Feed, these posts have like buttons, a space for comments, and a share button. In addition, they also have a Donate button in the lower right corner of the post, which you can click to initiate a donation.

If you want more info about the fundraiser, you click on the fundraiser’s cover photo or title to go to the fundraiser’s page. There you can read the full story about the fundraiser — why your friend has started it, what exactly your money will be accomplishing, and so on. If they are raising money for a nonprofit, it usually makes sense to double-check to see if what your friend says the money is for is the same thing the nonprofit says the money will be for.

Clicking Donate on either your friend’s post or the fundraiser’s page opens the donation window. In the top part of this window, choose the amount you wish to donate and decide who can see that you’ve donated. By default, the fact that donations are made is public, though the amount of any donation is kept between you and the person organizing the fundraiser (and the eventual recipient of the donation). You can also choose to keep your donation only visible to friends, or only visible to yourself, though again, the organizer and recipient will always be able to see that you have donated.

In the bottom part of the donation window, enter your credit card information or log in to your PayPal account. After you enter all the info needed, click the blue Donate button.

Even if you don’t donate to a fundraiser, you can show your support by leaving a post on the fundraiser’s page. Much like writing a post on a friend’s Timeline, this is something that many people will see, so if you’re wanting to offer support to someone more privately, consider sending a message instead.