Announcing: The Classy for Facebook Integration

The Classy team is excited to announce that our Classy for Facebook integration is now live and ready for you, our nonprofit partners. With this integration, you can further your reach and empower your fundraisers to raise more, enabling your nonprofit to do more good.

Why Prioritize Classy for Facebook?

Since launching in 2015, Facebook fundraising has powered 45 million people to raise more than $3 billion for nonprofits and personal causes that mean the most to them. However, the massive opportunity of fundraising on the social network has been an ongoing debate in the nonprofit industry.

Many organizations jumped at the opportunity to use the channel to raise more money, while others struggled to find a way to maintain their donor stewardship processes through a platform that doesn’t allow them access to donor contact information.

This struggle has led Facebook to prioritize creating partnerships with online fundraising software companies. Kendra Sinclair, Nonprofits Manager of Social Good at Facebook, says, “We’re partnering with Classy to create the Classy for Facebook integration to empower their fundraisers to make an even bigger impact. The nonprofit world is adjusting to reaching supporters, building connections, and fundraising completely online, and we’re proud to serve as a channel for organizations to be able to do that.”

As the social sector has responded to COVID-19 by mobilizing efforts and holding full force campaigns entirely online, these partnerships have never been more important.

“Giving nonprofits new tools and functionality during this challenging time is core to our mission,” Kendra says. “Working with nonprofit industry partners like Classy helps move the sector forward as we navigate these times together.”

Read on to learn how we approached the integration, the features you and your supporters will love, and how you can use Classy for Facebook to drive more impact.

What Is Classy for Facebook?

Meeting donors where they are is the driving force behind the success of Facebook fundraising, so creating an easy-to-use integration is a critical component to help accelerate that success.

Classy for Facebook is a direct integration to Facebook fundraising that allows supporters to duplicate their Classy fundraising page to Facebook in just a few clicks.

After creating an individual peer-to-peer or registration with fundraising campaign page for their favorite nonprofit, a supporter can seamlessly push that campaign, complete with their name, photo, and personal headline, to Facebook to create a Facebook fundraiser.

Your fundraisers can then earn donations through their Classy fundraising page and their Facebook fundraising page, with the campaign progress remaining in sync.

This allows your fundraisers’ networks, both on and off Facebook, to view their impact and see how their contributions are helping your nonprofit reach your fundraising goal. This is especially important when considering the goal proximity effect and knowing that donors are more inclined to donate when you are closer to hitting your goal.

Whether your fundraisers are collecting donations through their Classy page, Facebook, or both, all of the reporting will show up within Classy Manager, giving your nonprofit a holistic view of how your fundraisers are reaching success.

How Did We Approach This Integration?

To make this as valuable as possible for our customers, Classy’s product team met with the Facebook team to understand their approach to fundraising and how it complemented our own. Then, the team met with customers who had experience with Facebook fundraising to identify their pain points, what they value about it, and the functionality they would love to have in an integration.

“Through our conversations with customers, we identified a few key issues that we aim to solve for with our integration,” lead product manager Katie Golland says. “First is the ability to quickly and easily pull Facebook fundraising data over a period of time, second is an easy reconciliation process for the donations coming through Facebook, and third is the functionality to nurture donors and fundraisers that come through Facebook.”

A lack of donor data and clunky reporting process are the top frustrations that nonprofits face with Facebook fundraising. The protection of personal data ensures that no Facebook integration will be able to increase the amount of donor data your nonprofit receives from Facebook, but we have identified features that will help your organization streamline your processes and enhance your fundraisers’ experiences. Combined, these features will help your fundraisers reach success, steward third-party donors, and expand your reach, meaning you aren’t leaving any donations on the table for fear of a lack of donor data.

Download: Classy + Facebook—A Guide to Boosting Fundraiser Retention

How Will Classy for Facebook Benefit My Nonprofit?

Having a simplified process for your fundraisers to create a Facebook fundraiser that remains connected to your campaign progress and syncs with your overarching campaign reporting has many benefits for nonprofits.

Here are a few of the benefits that our team is most excited for nonprofits to experience.

Streamlined Reporting to Save Time and Gain Deeper Insights

A dedicated Facebook report gives nonprofits the ability to see all donations coming through Classy-powered Facebook Fundraising efforts. The ability to pull in Facebook data filters to any report eases the reconciliation process and helps provide a holistic view of where third-party donations are coming from. This means you can assess your most successful channels and let those insights inform your fundraising strategy.

And with the data import feature, you can choose to pull all Facebook and Instagram fundraising transaction data into Classy Reporting, or you can choose to keep your data to just Classy-initiated Facebook activity.

Giving nonprofits the power to choose how and when they use the integration was integral in our process. If you choose to use Classy for Facebook, you can easily turn on the integration for any peer-to-peer or registration with fundraising campaigns. This will unlock a brand new “Facebook” tab in the fundraiser’s dashboard.

Since you can toggle Classy for Facebook on or off at any point during a campaign, you can use the data you find to inform your next campaign strategy. Maybe it was a great way to help fundraisers get the ball rolling, or perhaps it was more successful when there was only a week left in the campaign. These insights can help your team understand the behavior of your fundraisers and their donors so you can maximize your impact.

Enhanced Visibility Highlights Engagement Opportunities

The bi-directional sync to Facebook allows Classy to pull in Facebook fundraising activity throughout many facets of Classy, including the campaign activity wall, the fundraiser’s activity wall, and the activity feed located in Classy Manager. Classy for Facebook intentionally pulls this data throughout Classy Manager to make sure you have full visibility into the fundraising activity happening on Facebook, all in one place. This saves time for your team members responsible for monitoring engagement and communications.

Classy for Facebook also provides the ability to segment fundraisers who have created a Facebook fundraiser and those who haven’t, so that your team can send targeted messages encouraging them to create one, congratulating them on their progress, and thanking them for their hard work.

Segmentation also comes in handy when you have a limited amount of time left in your campaign and are close to hitting your goal. You can reach out to fundraisers who have not pushed their fundraising page to Facebook and encourage them to make a few last-minute appeals before time runs out.

A Convenient Process Will Motivate Fundraisers

Similar to the way we built the Classy platform with ease of use and donor experience as driving product principles, we strive to make the fundraising process as easy as possible for your peer-to-peer fundraisers and their donors.

Fundraisers can use their Classy campaign to update their personal headline, fundraising goal, or fundraising end date, and then push those updates through to their Facebook fundraiser, similar to the way their progress will stay in sync.

Offering a more convenient way to fundraise on Facebook will have a multitude of benefits. One of these is a decreased number of $0 fundraisers, who are people who have signed up to fundraise without raising any money.

Sometimes a first-time fundraiser has every intention of raising money for your cause, but after making the decision, writing a headline, and creating their page, they feel overwhelmed. It can be uncomfortable to ask for money, or even know where to start, but if a supporter can immediately publish their campaign to a place where their entire network sees it, this removes a huge barrier to receiving their first donation.

Another example of how a seamless Facebook fundraising experience can benefit your fundraisers beyond that first donation is the motivation they’ll receive from seeing initial success. If your fundraisers earn donations and receive positive feedback from their network as soon as they start fundraising, they will be even more motivated to continue to grow that impact throughout your campaign.

Additionally, their friends and family can easily share their campaign, which increases the visibility of their fundraising page and expands awareness of your nonprofit and its campaign.

Expand Your Network and Your Reach

Today, few organizations can ignore the opportunity to give their fundraisers an intuitive platform to raise money on when their friends and family are already using it. According to Facebook’s social impact team, there are over 1 million nonprofits who use Facebook fundraising tools in the U.S. alone. The sector has evolved from warning against Facebook fundraising to creating integrations and best practices that embrace the power of fundraising on Facebook.

It was time for the Classy team to put our passion and expertise to work to create an integration that not only enhanced the power of fundraising on Facebook, but solved for pain points, added opportunities, and gave peer-to-peer fundraisers the seamless, user-centric experience they crave.

To dive into the impact that Classy for Facebook can have on your Facebook fundraising efforts, your overall fundraising strategy, and fundraiser retention efforts, download our guide below:

Download: Classy + Facebook—A Guide to Boosting Fundraiser Retention

Whether your nonprofit is new to Facebook fundraising, new to Classy, or neither, you can learn more about our platform and our latest integration by checking out recordings from our sessions during the Collaborative: Virtual Sessions. We had several product demos and sessions dedicated to walking you through Classy for Facebook.

Watch Recordings in Extended Sessions Library

You can also check out the following articles in our support center:

• • Get started
  • Turn on Classy for Facebook
  • Create a Classy for Facebook report
  • Create a Facebook page (share this with your supporters)
  • FAQ