Facebook, LinkedIn Transforming the Practice of Person-to-Person Fundraising

With the launch of Causes on Facebook and ‘digital bumper stickers’ on LinkedIn, non-profits can now benefit from the rocket success of the two social networking web sites.

Causes is a Facebook ‘application’ designed by Project Agape that adds the ability for friends on Facebook to raise money for any registered non-profit. LinkedIn’s digital bumper stickers are the equivalent of ‘donate now’ buttons for non-profits that a LinkedIn user can add to his or her profile page.

Colleagues on LinkedIn and friends on Facebook can use either system to affirm their connections with one another through a contribution to a contact's featured non-profit.

Facebook and LinkedIn have spent the last several years building web sites that mirror real world friendships and professional contacts. The resulting communities combine the always-on quality of the internet with the high trust-factor of actual friendship.

I can’t imagine a more ideal setting for experimenting with person-to-person fundraising. Person-to-person fundraising—also known as group fundraising—consists of individuals creating online campaigns on behalf of non-profit organizations, and then emailing friends, colleagues, family about the initiative and the intended outcome.

Facebook and LinkedIn remove an important step in conventional person-to-person fundraising: the email solicitation. Until now, the essential component of any group fundraising campaign was the email that an organizer had to send to his or her personal network in order to let people know about the giving opportunity.

With the launch Facebook Causes and LinkedIn for Good, a new group fundraising campaign can get syndicated to a individual's personal network instantly through the news feed on Facebook or by the appearance of a donation button on the initiator’s LinkedIn profile.

This evolution in the syndication process of group fundraising is quite significant. News of a campaign can reach its niche audience without the hassle of gathering together email addresses or the awkwardness of emailing a solicitation to friends and family.

I’ll be curious to see how the existing group fundraising platforms respond to these developments.

Related links:

• ChipIn’s difficulty integrating with Facebook
• BeaconFire’s blog entry Facebook Causes and Effects
  
• Interview with Joe Green of Project Agape
• Tutorial on how to use Causes on Facebook
• How to Use the Internet for Group Fundraising