Yes, you can run a Facebook ad to promote a fundraiser campaign on Facebook. Facebook provides tools to create fundraisers and boost them through paid advertising. This can be an effective way to raise more money and reach a wider audience.
What is a Facebook fundraiser?
A Facebook fundraiser allows people to raise money for a cause or organization through their Facebook network. It’s integrated directly into the Facebook platform, making it easy to set up a dedicated page for a fundraiser and collect donations.
Some key things to know about Facebook fundraisers:
- Individuals, groups, or Pages can create fundraisers
- You can raise money for registered nonprofit organizations or personal causes
- Facebook does not charge any platform fees – 100% of donations go to the selected fundraiser
- Donations can be made directly through Facebook using payment methods connected to a donor’s account
Facebook rolled out the fundraiser functionality in 2015 and it has become an immensely popular way for individuals and groups to leverage their social network for good.
Benefits of running a Facebook ad for a fundraiser
There are a few key benefits to running a Facebook ad to promote a fundraiser:
- Increased reach – Ads allow you to get your message in front of many more people beyond just your existing network and followers.
- Targeting capabilities – You can target your ads very precisely using Facebook’s detailed targeting options to ensure your ads are shown to people who are likely to be interested and willing to donate.
- More traffic to your fundraiser – The ads can drive increased traffic directly to your fundraiser page where people can easily donate.
- Brand awareness – For nonprofit causes and organizations, ads can help build greater visibility and awareness.
- Social proof – Ads can help a fundraiser seem more credible and legitimate to potential donors.
In short, the main goal of running ads is to supercharge your fundraising efforts to raise even more money through greater reach and visibility. The additional donations brought in through advertising can significantly outweigh the costs of running the ads.
Step-by-step guide to setting up a Facebook fundraiser ad
Here is a step-by-step walkthrough of how to go about running Facebook ads for a fundraiser:
- Create your fundraiser – Use the Facebook Fundraisers tool to set up a dedicated fundraiser page connected to the non-profit you want to raise money for. Customize all the details including your goal amount, cover photo, text explaining your cause, etc.
- Boost your fundraiser post – When you publish your fundraiser, you’ll have the option to “Boost Post” which will run it as an ad. You can boost the main post announcing your fundraiser to get in front of more people.
- Create a Facebook Ad – In addition to boosting the fundraiser post itself, you can create ads directly through Facebook’s Ads Manager. This allows greater targeting and creative options.
- Choose your objective – When setting up the ad, choose “Traffic” or “Engagement” as the objective so that it optimizes for driving clicks, reactions, comments, and shares.
- Target your audience – Use filters like location, age, gender, interests, behaviors, etc. to target your ads to people who are likely donors.
- Design compelling creative – Use eye-catching images, video, and text focused on the impact donations can make. Convey urgency and any matching opportunities.
- Send traffic to your fundraiser – Have your ad link directly to your fundraiser page where donations can be made.
- Monitor and optimize – Track your ad performance and tweak targeting, creatives, bidding as needed to improve results.
Types of Facebook ads to boost fundraisers
When running Facebook ads for fundraisers, you have all the same ad formats available as with regular Facebook ads. Some effective options include:
Photo Ads
These are simple image ads with overlay text that aim to catch attention and raise awareness. You can highlight an important aspect of your cause or show imagery of the people/animals that donations help.
Video Ads
Short video clips can help you tell a more compelling story and elicit greater emotional response from viewers. For fundraisers, using videos that document your mission and how donations help can be very impactful.
Carousel Ads
With carousel ads you can combine multiple images/videos in one ad unit and add more text. This allows you to showcase different aspects of your fundraiser.
Slideshow Ads
Similar to carousels, slideshow ads combine multiple visuals and text in a scrollable format. You can use these to highlight different information on your cause.
Stories Ad
With Facebook Stories ads, you can use video clips, images, text, and graphics to create multi-frame visual stories optimized for mobile. This immersive format can work well for fundraiser storytelling.
Top tips for running successful fundraiser ads
Here are some top tips for running Facebook ads that will help drive more donations and funds raised for your fundraiser:
- Pull on the heartstrings – Use emotional and compelling creative focused on your mission, not just selling.
- Leverage video – Video ads have the highest engagement so use them to tell your story.
- Highlight urgency – Create a sense of urgency like matching funds or limited time campaigns.
- Use clear call-to-actions – “Donate Now” or “Learn More” CTAs should be prominently displayed.
- Target engaged audiences – Focus on people already connected to and concerned with your cause.
- Retarget engaged users – Keep messaging those who already engaged with your content or ads.
- Personalize ads – Use the name of individuals if possible to make ads feel more direct.
- Split test ads – Try different variations of creative, messaging, etc. to see what resonates best.
- Partner with influencers – Influencer endorsements can give your fundraiser broader credibility.
Measuring results from fundraiser ads
It’s important to closely monitor and measure the results from your Facebook fundraiser ads. Here are key metrics and data to pay attention to:
Amount raised
The bottom line – this shows if your ads are actually resulting in more donations and money raised. Compare to your non-paid fundraiser performance.
Cost per donation
This metric looks at how much you are spending on ads vs. the donations driven. Lower CPD is better.
Reach
How many unique users are you showing your ads to? Is it expanding your audience?
Clicks
Number of clicks to your fundraiser page or donation site – more clicks = more potential conversions.
Engagement rate
The percentage of people seeing your ads who engage through reactions, comments, shares. Higher is better.
Conversions
The number of donations or conversion events. Review conversion rates too.
Analyzing these metrics helps you gauge performance and refine your ads to be more effective at driving fundraising results.
Conclusion
Running Facebook ads can be an extremely effective tactic to boost fundraising results from an existing Facebook fundraiser campaign.
The ability to reach larger audiences beyond your existing network and drive more traffic to your fundraiser provides significant upside at a reasonable cost.
With strategic targeting, compelling messaging, and smart measurement Facebook ads can deliver phenomenal returns on spend while raising greater funds for important causes.