Fundraising Through Facebook?
Posted by C. Holland on Apr 28, 2009A friend forwarded me a newsletter that he receives which deals specifically with missionary fundraising, both training and suggestions. The current issue suggests joining Facebook, if you haven’t already, then finding school friends or old acquaintances specifically to (in time) ask them to financially support your ministry as a missionary.
I’m not on Facebook, but I was on MySpace a couple years back and must admit that I tried just what they are suggesting. It didn’t work for me; perhaps it would work for others. Check out what the newsletter had to say below:
Facebook: The Support Raiser’s New Best Friend
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April 30th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Yeah, I dont think I would want to use facebook specifically’ for finding supporters but I think its a great resource to keep people in the loop. The Group and Cause pages on facebook are a good way to get people involved I think.
April 30th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Hi Liam, Facebook as a communication tool for people who know each other relatively well can be great, I’m sure. The way I took the article made it sound like I should look up my school chums from 25 years ago from grade school and, after a few niceties, hit them up for money. If I were on the receiving end of that, I’d be insulted. However, if it were used to refresh genuine relationships and the situation naturally progressed towards support, I don’t think that would be bad.
May 1st, 2009 at 5:53 pm
The young man I told you about a few months ago who wanted to be a missionary to Vienna, Austria tried to do the majority of his fundraising via facebook. He even tried the “if x amount of people would commit to $x/month” approach but, in the end, he wasn’t successful. To me it seemed like a pretty lazy way to approach it.
I have a lot of missionary friends on fb and sometimes their status updates will be quite suggestive: “Wow, went to pay the power for the orphanage today and was $100 short” or “Trusting God for a new ministry van…” I almost want to add the “Hint, hint” in the comments section.
I can only imagine the suggestive tweets…
May 2nd, 2009 at 9:49 am
Hi Greg, one thing we learned in fundraising is that the direct (preferably face-to-face) method is much, much more effective, no matter how close you think you may be with a person. Solely using Facebook (or any arm’s-distance communication, like a canned appeal letter) just doesn’t seem like it would do the job. Of course, this is our experience; I bet there are those who may have had better success with certain methods.
And even in church presentation appeals, we always had more commitment (either in finances or just prayer support) from the smaller churches, usually because everyone felt they could interact more personally with us afterwards.
The “Fundraising Your Ministry” book would consider those type of Facebook status updates (or Tweets or whatever) to be a big no-no. You conveyed exactly what the book said: supporters don’t appreciate hints or overwhelmingly constant appeals for money (which can come across to the recipient as whining or being complaintive). If people truly need additional support, better to be upfront about it than to hint.