GivingTuesday Challenge

GivingTuesday is a global day of giving to nonprofit organizations. You can always make online donations here, or mail a check using this form. We’d also like to challenge you to help Art Center East expand our reach by hosting a fundraiser on your personal Facebook page. Our need is great this year and this is a small (but mighty) way you can help!

Who can do it? Anyone with a Facebook account.

How does it help? Hosting a fundraiser offers an easy and compelling way for your friends and family to join you in giving to an organization that you care about. This helps ACE reach people who might like to support our work, but who aren’t in our immediate audience. By creating a fundraiser, you also endorse our work in a way that might make the difference in someone’s willingness to give.

What do I need to do? Facebook offers an easy way for its users to raise money for a nonprofit of their choice – you may have seen your Facebook friends hosting a nonprofit fundraiser in honor of their birthday or another occasion. We are challenging our supporters to host an ACE GivingTuesday fundraiser for $100 or more from November 30 until December 7 on their personal Facebook page. Full instructions for setting up a fundraiser are available below. After setting up your fundraiser, you won’t be responsible for much more than sharing it to your page and thanking donors.

When do I need to do it? We’re asking our supporters to set up their fundraiser on November 30 so it’s ready to go right away on the morning of GivingTuesday (Dec 1). Facebook offers a donation match that day (starting at 6 a.m. PST) that goes until their funds run out (last year they were gone in about an hour!). Having your fundraiser set up means that there’s a better chance of donations getting matched that morning. Worth a shot! After you set it up, your fundraiser will end automatically on the date you set, no matter how much you’ve raised at that point.

Where does the money I raise go? Network for Good, a secondary business run by Facebook, processes payments and distributes funds to the intended recipients within a month or two of the fundraiser’s completion. You will not be responsible for handling the money. Art Center East will receive a check for all the money raised through Facebook fundraisers done in our name directly from Network for Good.

Isn’t it better to just send you a check? Network for Good absorbs the processing fees for donations made to nonprofits, so donating through Facebook is pretty much the same as writing ACE a check. By donating this way, however, you amplify your donation by inviting your friends and family to join you and (possibly) through Facebook’s donation match on Dec 1.

I’m not good with computers… No worries! If you’re able to navigate your Facebook account to look at, like, and comment on posts, give fundraiser setup a try – it’s a simple process that takes about 5 minutes to complete. If you get stuck, see if someone in your family can help you!

I’m setting up my fundraiser and I can’t find ‘Art Center East’ when I search for a nonprofit… Our legal business name is a holdover from one of the organizations that merged to form Art Center East. You can raise money for ACE by selecting Eastern Oregon Regional Arts Council Inc. when creating your fundraiser.

How to set up a personal Facebook Fundraiser for Art Center East:

It looks like a lot of steps, but the process is straightforward and can take as little as 5 minutes from start to finish!

1. On a computer: Look at the top of your Facebook page for the + sign in a circle (to the right of your profile pic), click on it and choose ‘Fundraiser’ from the drop-down menu. On a phone: Open your Facebook app and click on the menu icon on the bottom right corner of the screen; select “Fundraisers” from the menu.
2. Select “Nonprofit” and search for “Eastern Oregon Regional Arts Council Inc,” Art Center East’s legal business name, and select it for your fundraiser.
3. On a computer: On the left side of the screen you’ll see the fundraiser set-up fields. On a phone: Scroll down to see the fundraiser set-up fields.
4. Goal: Enter any amount you think you can raise. We’re challenging our supporters to aim for at least $100. We recommend setting your goal amount for anywhere between $100 and $500, amounts that are reasonable to raise in a week’s time. (Anecdote: Last year, I (Sarah) raised $250 for ACE in one day just by friends – many of whom have never even been to La Grande – giving $5-$20 each. I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly this happened and how willing many of my friends and family were to make a small GivingTuesday donation. Aim higher than you think you can do because there is no penalty for not reaching your goal!) Your donation goal is just that – a goal – and fundraisers are allowed to surpass it. If your $100 fundraiser ends up raising $500, there’s no penalty and everyone wins!
5. Title: Change the fundraiser title so it reads “[Your Name]’s Fundraiser for Art Center East.”
6. Fundraiser Description: Facebook provides an automated description. We encourage you to add a sentence or two about why you want to raise funds for Art Center East. Personal messages go a long way toward appealing to your fellow donors. Please replace “Eastern Oregon Regional Arts Council Inc,” with “Art Center East” in the automated description so people will recognize the organization name – it appears three times in the text.
7. End date: You can manually select an end date if you set up your fundraiser on a computer. On a phone, it will set the end date automatically at 15 days from the set-up date. We feel like a week is a good amount of time, so feel free to select December 7 as your end date, or end your fundraiser on a date of your choice.
8. Check everything one more time (making sure you’ve updated the organization name to “Art Center East” rather than “Eastern Oregon Regional Arts Council”), then hit “create.”

Tips for a successful fundraiser:

• Be the first person to donate! It doesn’t matter how much you donate, the act of your donation shows your friends and family that you care about this organization and it might make them want to help, too! If you would like to try to get your donation matched by Facebook, plan to make it around 6am on December 1. This is when Facebook will release their pool of matching funds and that money will likely go quickly (last year they were gone in about an hour).
• Share the fundraiser to your Facebook feed, writing a brief encouraging statement to go with it that summarizes why you want to raise money for ACE.
• Invite your Facebook friends to the fundraiser. Facebook gives you this option in an easy format right after you create your fundraiser – select friends you think would like to donate. They can always decline, but never underestimate the power of an invitation!
• Keep sharing your fundraiser and encouraging donors (“Any amount is meaningful.” or “Thanks for your donations! We’re halfway there!”). Sharing the fundraiser to your feed more than once means it appears on your friends’ feeds more than once and they might have missed it the first time (or three). One of the rules of marketing is that a person needs to see something up to 14 times before they act on it, so posting once is often not enough to get everyone’s attention or action.