THANK YOU – Notes from NP Camp on Facebook

Didn’t make it to our sold out Non Profit Bar Camp here in Austin? Well as part of THANKING YOU for what do you to make this Blog great here are the notes from the session I lead on Facebook for Non Profits:

http://npocamp.net/?p=65

Notes By:

npocamp-2009-pod_2-1030Session Card(s)

Notes By Ken Martin

Facebook session led by David Neff, director of Web, Film and Interactive Strategy for the Austin office of the American Cancer Society
Facebook has 300 million users and 500 million photos are uploaded each month
Facebook is where the action is, and it’s replacing web pages for some people
E-mails sent from Facebook do not bounce, although some may lag 12 hours, and some people may not check their Facebook e-mails.

Groups, Causes, Fan Pages

Fan pages are for volunteers, constituents, who sign up
You cannot sign up a fan but invite them to join
One button updates all fans at once with e-mail crafted on the site (Causes and Groups don’t let you do that)
You can parse out on fan pages where to send messages, Groups send them to everyone on the list
Thinks the long-term strategy of Facebook is to go only with Fan pages
You can scroll down any fan page and see link to start your own fan page
Groups are good for private activities, can set the privacy list
Andrea Lynn complained that her cause page was removed
David said the same can happen with fan or group pages, e.g. Ranger Rick removed from Facebook profile because not a real person
It’s not a perfect system, but it’s free and you sign an agreement
David mentioned mailchimp.com as a way to use a donate button, or can throw in a link to PayPal or a web page
Causes is Facebook’s way to give back, but you must have a 501(c)(3) nonprofit
Can recruit people to your cause but you get a lot of “slacktavists” who sign up but don’t contribute
Need to find key fundraisers who will recruit others, but don’t count on it for money
Can market your cause on your fan page
Sarah Andrews [ @atxsarah ] noted the problem with interns setting up Facebook pages and then leaving, which led to discussion of need to have redundant backup people with passwords
Flowtown.com was mentioned as a way to find out what social networks to use, based on your own e-mail contact list (In another session later, gist.com was mentioned as a service for doing this.)
Techsoup.org was mentioned as source for step-by-step instructions
Nten.org and 501TechAustin.org also mentioned as good sources of info
David noted that charitynavigator.org will take payments from Facebook causes and write a check every 6 months
Someone else can start a Cause page for your cause
Causes will be listed on the left side of Fan pages
Paul Silver of Common Cause said you can import e-mail lists to Fan pages and he’s imported thousands of e-mail addresses to build support
Yvette Hansen of Design.Build.Live uses livefeed.org and News Feed (didn’t get why)
Robin Bradford [ @anybabycan ] of Any Baby Can said people can post photos and stories about their babies on Any Baby Can’s page
David said people want to share stories—that’s what Groups and Causes let you do, share your stories

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