Facebook – Charitable Giving Tools
Received an email from Facebook about Giving Tools or seen it in sector news, but not sure what it means for you? Don’t worry – we’ve got all the details you need below.
WHAT IS IT?
After a trial period in the US, Facebook now allows EU charities and NFPs to raise funds directly from their Facebook pages. The tools do what they say on the tin, in so much as you can now take payments via Facebook – minus a 5% admin deduction (similar to that of Just Giving and other fundraising platforms.)
The platform also allows others to raise money in similar ways to Just Giving or Virgin Money Giving. Supporters and willing followers are able to set up dedicated pages for their cause and to tell others about their story and the mission behind the given organisation, to push forward to the fundraising goal.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:
To sign up you must be able to provide:
- A VAT number (if applicable)
- A charity registration number (if applicable)
- A charity registration document issued or approved by a government entity
- A bank account registered with a licensed financial services institution
Once you’ve got all of those you’ll need to:
- Ensure your charity page is in the category of ‘Nonprofit Organisation’ or ‘Charity’ and the address is included in the ‘About’ section.
- Sign Up for Facebook Payments from the Page admin account.
- Accept Facebook’s terms of service
- Accept the terms of Business Manager.
- The date of birth and address of the charity’s CEO or Executive Director.
- Bank account details, including bank name, bank account holders name (organisation name)
- A legible and official bank letter of statement dated within the last 3 months
- SWIFT code and bank IBAN number.
If you find a non-authorised entity raising money in your name, you can easily request it be removed by reporting it on this link.
It’s early days for the new Facebook tools and so far we haven’t seen any data from pilot in the US – though they were seemingly good enough, to allow wider roll-out. The biggest unknown is user acceptance; will users be happy to provide card details directly to Facebook? Looks like we’re about to find out…