Facebook Fundraisers
By Stacey Flowerdew
Yes! You too can be a superstar fundraiser for CNPS!
If you are a Facebook user, you may have seen friends and family members sharing Facebook fundraisers for charity. These fundraisers are commonly referred to as “birthday fundraisers,” though any Facebook user can create one at any time, even without an occasion, which makes them a perfect vehicle for raising awareness and donations for a cause.
Facebook fundraisers are essentially a peer-to-peer crowdraising instrument, and their magic is that anyone can create and promote them. By creating a fundraiser through your Facebook profile, and sharing it with your network, you’re passing a virtual hat to your friends and family to help make a bigger donation to organizations like CNPS.
It’s incredibly easy! Facebook has made the fundraiser process a no-brainer to encourage wide participation. The platform will walk you through a few simple steps to set up your fundraiser, and most importantly, make it easy to share with your friends. Likewise, contributors to your fundraiser donate with just a couple quick clicks and never leave Facebook. What’s the best part? Not only has Facebook waived all fundraiser fees, so that 100 percent of the money raised will go straight to CNPS, but you don’t have to do anything to release the money at the conclusion of your fundraiser. It’s automatic! Facebook distributes charitable donations on a regular schedule, and CNPS will receive your donations in as little as two weeks.
Even though Facebook fundraisers are still pretty new, we are proud to see CNPS members already taking advantage of them to raise funds and increase awareness of CNPS. Thank you to Rebecca Mannion, Nina Barton, Hannah Kang, and Mary Frances Kelly Poh, who together, have raised hundreds of dollars through their Facebook profiles for CNPS. Thanks for being superstar fundraisers for our native flora!
Stacey Flowerdew is the Senior Development Coordinator for CNPS.