Facebook Won’t Solve All of Your Problems

It's springtime again, and a lot of political campaigns and nonprofit organizations have fallen head over heels for Facebook.

It's hard not to fall for the alluring ways of Facebook. After all, at first glance there are millions of people using the site daily, just waiting to be contacted by the campaigns, groups and organizations they're interested in.

Unfortunately, Facebook isn't that simple. You can't just create a group, put up a page, and expect millions of people to join your cause - or pull out their credit cards to make a donation. And it's especially difficult to move people off of Facebook and take action offline or on another site.

In fact, the Washington Post reported yesterday that nonprofit organizations are having a hard time raising money through Facebook:

The Facebook application Causes, hugely popular among nonprofit organizations seeking to raise money online, has been largely ineffective in its first two years, trailing direct mail, fundraising events and other more traditional methods of soliciting contributions.

Only a tiny fraction of the 179,000 nonprofits that have turned to Causes as an inexpensive and green way to seek donations have brought in even $1,000, according to data available on the Causes developers' site.

So why can't you raise millions of dollars on Facebook? I have a few of my own theories:

• Facebook's ever-evolving design changes. When Facebook causes launched in 2007, applications like Causes were given great real estate: applications were located on supporters' direct profiles, making them easy for friends to see. Today, most application boxes are buried on the fourth page of the site's new tiered profile system - hiding them for most people. If you can't find it on Facebook, does it really exist?
• There's a lot going on on Facebook. When we build a donation form on a website, we advise clients to make it as simple as possible so people don't get overwhelmed or distracted. You can't do that on Facebook. Making a contribution through Causes is far more difficult than updating a status, joining a group or writing a snarky comment on a friend's wall - and thousands of other organizations are asking for your money in the very same application box. Without complete control of the system, there's no way to shut the other options off.
• Donations aren't a typical part of Facebook. The most effective asks on Facebook conform to Facebook's norms - for example, updating a status message, joining a group, or RSVPing for an event. Right now, making a donation isn't one of those norms.

That said, this problem isn't unique to Facebook. Tons of organizations think that if they put up a website with a donation page, suddenly money from low-dollar donors will come falling from the sky.

Online fundraising, whether it be on Facebook or your website, takes a lot of hard work: building a relationship with supporters, empowering them to take action, and proving that their support will make a difference. And while Facebook is popular, email is still the killer application for making that happen -- building a strong email list that allows you to have that ongoing conversation.

You may not be able to raise millions of dollars on Facebook, but that doesn't mean it's useless. Many of the benefits that come from Facebook are intangible; you can't see how many times a news story you share gets shared with other people's friends, for example. But as a means of publicizing your work, and reaching out to a new audience, Facebook is a great tool - and one that is significantly less expensive than direct mail or a gala dinner.