Have you ever posted a fb fundraiser for a non-profit? I posted a birthday fundraiser on fb for JDRF in September. If you have ever posted a fundraiser on fb how did you know the funds were sent to the organization you intended?
//Followup to post found above. I contacted JDRF on 10/23 to ask if they received donations from fb fundraiser. “I posted a birthday fundraiser, 9/12/20 to 9/19/20, for jdrf. $325 was donated. Did jdrf receive this money?”
I honestly thought that due to the size of JDRF operations I probably would not receive a reply. It could be a coincidence (or is it?) that I received a reply today:
“Hi Henry, thank you for reaching out and for supporting JDRF! We did–we so appreciate your support of JDRF and our mission!”
Karen, I had sent an e-mail to JDRF asking if they received the amount I had raised on fb? One week later I received a reply via messenger. The copied inquiry & reply are below.
Me: I posted a birthday fundraiser, 9/12/20 to 9/19/20, for jdrf. $325 was donated. Did jdrf receive this money?
JDRF: Hi Henry, thank you for reaching out and for supporting JDRF! We did–we so appreciate your support of JDRF and our mission!
Glad to hear that JDRF received your donation and that they responded to you so quickly. As the President of a small, local chapter of a national charity and I can tell you that when you donate through Facebook there’s no guarantee that Facebook will actually give your donation to the charity in question. Our profile was verified by Facebook as a charity years ago (I’m the one that applied for verification and jumped through all the paperwork hoops) and we’ve held several successful fundraisers over the years, but in May we hosted a Facebook fundraiser as part of a larger, national effort and have yet to receive our $610 from Facebook. When our treasurer asked why they told her she wasn’t our financial administrator and made us jump through all sorts of hoops to get her listed as our financial administrator. Now they’re claiming our tax ID doesn’t match our organization’s name and are making us go through the verification process again and I have no idea why. Meanwhile they’ve officially put a hold on any donations we receive through them. We took $610 out of our budget and sent it to our parent organization to honor our donors’ wishes, but now our budget for next year is going to be short unless we can get Facebook to release those funds.
I’m in a few Facebook groups for non-profit leaders and I know I’m not the only one having difficulties like this with Facebook Support. I doubt JDRF would have problems like this, being that they are such a large organization, but I think people ought to know that FB can be shady and they’re not very helpful to smaller organizations.
Thanks for heads up bsteingard. I have always believed that Mark Z. & fb are shady. It took many years for me to join & I did so to see pics of our Grandchildren. Even though my teenage grandsons invite me so far I have not joined any other social media sites. I am a bit of a dinosaur but havent totally ruled it out. I posted seeking to hear from individual users not even thinking about experience of non-profit organizations re: fb fundraisers. You are the first head of a fb registered non-profit who responded with a deserved, negative review of your current experience. I certainly believe you bc of my observations of fb.
Individuals who have posted fb fundraisers all responded with positive reviews. The only negative reviews I received were from fb friends with no experience but who gladly warned me against using fb fundraisers. They could tell me horror stories they had heard somewhere but couldn’t name a source. They would then name my mistakes & tell me what I needed to do next time. I was seeking answers from fb users who actually had used fb fundraising. Having been an Oppositional Defiant child you can imagine how texts on my mistakes & next time advice were received.
Sorry to say I now have a story of frustration & anger experienced by a non-profit using fb fundraiser. It is terrible that fb keeps making you jump through hoops. Even though it creates a terrible gap in your budget. I am glad that they are holding the funds. I actually thought that you were going to text that fb gave it to another non-profit org with a similiar name. That reflects my level of distrust.
Hoping for the best.
The one positive takeaway from my experience is that they are very careful about making sure the funds are going where they’re supposed to. The problem is that they aren’t very responsive during this process, so if you’re a small organization without a dedicated IT department and tons of lawyers to sort everything out for you, it can take months to get through all the red tape. Like I said, they didn’t tell us that anything was wrong. They just waited for us to notice that we hadn’t gotten our funds yet and then still took weeks to respond. FB Support actually never replied to me at all; they’ve only been responding to our Treasurer.
I’m happy to tell you the name of the organization I run so that you don’t become another one of the stories without a source, I just don’t want to post it on a public forum. Feel free to message me privately if you want more information.
If you want to host a fundraiser, I recommend checking if your charity is registered on GoFundMe Charity (https://www.gofundme.com/start/charity-fundraising) and then hold the fundraiser there. I’ve had much better experiences with GoFundMe. They’ve even been hosting free webinars throughout the pandemic for non-profit organizations on how to run successful online events and fundraisers.
Oh, and Facebook doesn’t always notify us that someone held a fundraiser on our behalf. We have to go looking for that information. But when I do find out about one I try to post a thank you (from the charity’s FB account, not mine personally) so that the person knows we’re getting the funds and are grateful for the support.
