andrew's blog

Facebook Causes

A cause is similar to a Facebook Page or Group, but has some very important differences:

1. It can accept donations via credit card, which makes it the only built in way for you to monetize yourself on Facebook.

2. Many built in mechanisms to support fundraising and membership drives.  Keep in mind this is membership in a Facebook cause so it's not as useful to us as we have our own memberships we are interested in selling.

3. Easy way to monetize your Facebook Page as you can include it as your "Featured Cause" to give it great placement in your sidebar.

4. Supporters can make "Birthday Wishes" for friends to make donations to their featured cause on their birthday.  Great viral means to market fundraising

After saying all of that in favor of Facebook Causes, the research shows there isn't a huge amount of fundraising done on Facebook.

SUGGESTION: Set up a Facebook Cause, Feature it on your Facebook Page and then leave it be.  Make sure you set up a default welcome message that drives users who find you through the causes application to become fans of your page on Facebook, where they can find the information you'll be updating more frequently.  Your Page should be your main portal.  Causes are there to help you monetize the page and nothing more.  Have some staff lead by example by sending their birthday wishes to help start things off.

ALTERNATIVE: If you'd rather not set up a causes page, you can also use FBML to add a donate button from whichever service (Paypal, Google Checkout, Etc) to your site.  Which is probably a good idea even if you do add a cause.

Set up a Facebook Page for your organization
Facebook Pages are like Facebook Groups with the exception that a Facebook page has fans instead of members and Facebook Pages can be automatically updated with content from your website's RSS.

1. Go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php
   
2. Choose Brand or Product > Non-Profit
3. Fill out the rest of the information for your organization

This workshop focuses on the most useful and relevant technologies for bicycle and pedestrian advocacy organizations.  It will cover databases, online event registrations, online systems and tools, list serves, web 2.0 technologies, RSS feeds, content management systems, and so much more. Ensure your organization is embracing all opportunities to connect with your members, increase your membership, and raise funds effectively.

The web is a huge but fractured market.  Building a great web site and creating compelling content is the first step in successfully promoting your cause online.  The next step is to collect and connect your content to the myriad of social networks that will connect you to millions of users.  Using these tools, we increased our web hits to our Bike to Work Day site 7 fold (from 1 Million in 2008 to 7 Million in 2009)

Facebook is an important marketing tool for promoting the great work your coalition is doing and building your membership.  With a Facebook page and cause, you can keep your members on Facebook aware of your events and activities, connect with new potential members through their friends who are already fans of your group and give your fans the chance to support your org through birthday wishes.  If your coalition's website creates an RSS feed, you can even automatically update your presence on Facebook.

Setting up Your Facebook Page to update from your RSS
The most critical piece of a successful Facebook Page is frequent updates.  It would take a lot of work to create updates specifically for your Facebook Page, but you can stream your website's own updates to it through the notes feature, making it effortless to maintain your Facebook page.

1. Go to your Facebook page (at bottom left of the Facebook webpage)
   
    
2. Click on the page name (this is also where you cn check your site metrics)
   
    
3. Choose Edit Page under your site's logo
   
    
4. Find Notes and select Edit
   
    
5. Choose Import a Blog
   
    
6. Then just enter your web page's RSS URL (Example: http://btwd.bayareabikes.org/rss.xml).  It may take a while for a message to post from your RSS to your facebook (up to 2 hours).
    
7. If you ever find that new stories from your webpage's RSS stop appearing on Facebook, follow these steps below then follow steps 4,5 and 6.  Sometimes it will lose the feed and resetting it like this is the only way to fix it.

   7a. Choose Edit Import Settings
   

   7b. Then Choose Stop Importing
   

   After that you can import your blog again and it will find any missed postings.  It's a good idea to check your facebook page every few days to make sure posts are still updating.