It hasn’t launched yet.

For those of you interested in being in the Beta Testing group, please reply back with your email addresses

I promise the only email you’ll ever get from me is the invite:)

http://www.FacebookFundraisingTips.com

It’s a free ebook on the 7 Secrets to Facebook Fundraising

One of the issues with the interaction design on some of the fundraising apps on Facebook is that the invitation to join the cause is “donate now” – it doesn’t allow for engagement strategies or relationship building first before you ask for money unless you do it manually -which is labor intensive.

With that being said, however, I think there still is tremendous potential for Facebook and other social networks because of two things: the sheer amount of my personal data it has, and how it maps my social graph. Neither of those will fit in a Salesforce database, and I don’t think Facebook will ever let you export the data you would like. Remember Scoblegate? Huge privacy concerns.

Facebook, and other social networks, are powerful tools, but only when they are used effectively. Learning how to do so will require rethinking their purpose.

I think the fault lies with those of us at the intersection of nonprofits and technology, who tend to focus too much on the technology and not enough on the underlying processes. That’s our responsibility to document and communicate for the app developers. And so far, we’re mostly failing.

It’s not to sell performance tickets. It’s to raise awareness, empower our fans to easily share our info with their friends, ask some why the don’t currently attend events, ask others why they do attend, give away a couple free tickets a month to group members, etc.

For us, the Facebook group is about helping our evangelists spread the word to more of their friends and to create a focus group community where fans can share their thoughts, frustrations, and advice for making the experience better.

Personally, I think the problem is that Facebook Causes is two different things to the people on either side of the equation — to nonprofiteers: it’s a way of raising money. The Facebookians: it’s a way of showing affiliation with or support of a specific cause.

I suspect that people on the Facebook side like the Cause application better than the nonprofiteers do: it’s like everything else on a facebook profile — it’s creates a picture of who the user is — the music they like, the friends they have, the movies they see, and the causes they care about. It works fine there.

So, the trick is either build a different application (Beth’s comment) or go with the flow of this one and use it as a way to gain awareness — measuring other kinds of conversions (click-thrus to the website, signing up for an event) than just conversions to donors.

When I go on Facebook, I leave my credit card behind. And I am willing to bet lots, that I am not alone.

Facebook is for being social, making connections, showing off one’s activities, accomplishments, jokes, etc. Facebook is not for selling stuff, or any remotely financial transactions, including for good causes. Of course, this represents a HUGE problem for Facebook, not just for the causes trying to use the site. But that’s matter for another post . . .

Marketers jobs are to get results. Experimental marketing is just that (experimental), and that’s why I applauded these causes for reporting poor results in my P.S.

At the same time, I think effective marketing goes cross-channel, is integrated, and involves calls to action or word of mouth. Since these were fundraising efforts, it’s the prior. This tool is inherently flawed because it is not cross channel and cannot be integrated. Further the call to action is inherently weak.