Announcing the Social Impact Education Conference for Nonprofits

Join us on Sept. 9-10 at Facebook’s Social Impact Education Conference, and learn how to use digital tools to scale your fundraising efforts, reach new audiences and highlight your cause.

In the meantime, get inspired by how a few other nonprofits have been successfully using digital tools to support their goals, below.

A Dog Rescue Creates Community on Instagram

Forgotten Dogs Rescue is a foster home-based nonprofit dedicated to rescuing homeless and abandoned dogs. They set out to build an Instagram community of dog-loving people to help give abandoned dogs forever homes and generate donations to pay for their medical care.

When they planned their content, they kept a few things consistent: sharing endearing, high-quality photos in their posts, keeping their captions conservational and fun, and posting regularly.

They also made a point of responding to every comment and message, creating dedicated posts and Instagram Stories to shout out and thank their followers and supporters. Actions like these helped them meaningfully engage with the community they built.

To reach new people, they found hashtags that were popular on Instagram and used them consistently.

Forgotten Dogs Rescue’s strategies helped to grow their follower base from 4,000 to 13,000—that’s a 225% increase over two years.

A Music Academy Generates Leads by Experimenting with Messenger

The Musically Minded Academy is a nonprofit educational organization that supports musicians and music lovers by providing children and adults with music programs.

They wanted to find a way to get more people to sign up for their music lessons, so they experimented with Messenger. The team set up a series of five automated questions for prospective students to answer when they visited their Page or clicked one of their ads. Someone from the academy would usually respond for a follow-up conversation within an hour.

They successfully used automated messages on Facebook Messenger to generate leads from people visiting their Facebook Page or clicking on their ads. One recent Facebook ad reached 2,300 people and generated 182 leads from people who completed the questionnaire and expressed interest in taking lessons.

A Menstrual Advocacy Nonprofit Increases Awareness and Volunteer Base with Facebook Ads

Founded by twins Brooke and Breanna Bennett, Women in Training (WIT) is a nonprofit that advocates for menstrual equity and menstrual education. WIT used Facebook to increase awareness, volunteer outreach and fundraising goals, which included: Setting up Page Fundraisers on Giving Tuesday, using Facebook Insights to identify their most engaging posts and promoting or boosting their most successful Page posts as ads.

WIT started generating donations from around the country, which allowed them to deliver 500 “WITKITS” (canvas bags full of menstrual and hygiene products) to at-risk girls, young women, and non-binary youth. This was a significant increase from the 25 WITKITS they had distributed previously on the twins’ 12th birthday. They were also able to increase their Page likes, daily Page users, volunteer count, and donations raised. The twins are now 14 years old and distribute 500 WITKITS each month.