Why the Facebook Ads Grant Petition for Nonprofits Is a Terrible Idea

Comments

• charlie sandner

  In Google Ad Grants, we have $10,000 per month. I try to keep the pages/Ads relevant, The Quality Score high, and the CTR about 6%. Given that, it's a B to spend $10,000 per month. I totally agree.

• Steven Shattuck

  I don't doubt you've been successful. You appear to be a seasoned marketer. I don't see Invisible Children, whose annual revenue last year was upwards of $6M, needing any grants to do paid search. The point I was trying to make is that the kind of organization who would need need a grant (i.e. small shop) likely wouldn't have in-house expertise like yours.

• Noelle

  If you can see the grant spend as an acquisition tool for finding new supporters by targeting people that may be more likely to take interest in your organizations work, then It can be really powerful. I've used low budget ad campaigns to boost my orgs work frequently and it works well. I think writing it off is really misleading. I'd welcome the money to be put in the sector. The key advise I'd give is to not think about the investment as producing an Ad campaigns, where you are promoting a superficial banner or commercial. Think about it as paying to serve your best content to a new audience using detailed targeting so you can 1) find new people who are interested in your cause 2) learn what types of people are interested in your cause 3) add a touchpoint to your existing communication strategy. There are so many great things to learn about your messaging by testing content on FB.

• Steven Shattuck

  Thanks for your thoughts, Mark! Funny how the only opposition I encounter on this topic seems to come from those in the paid search industry. :)
  I'm not sure what the significance is of your first, second and fourth points, since my article was about Facebook and not Google or Bing. To my knowledge, Facebook does not currently have an ad grants program for nonprofits - this article is an argument against a hypothetical. Google has many other revenue streams besides paid search, including Google Apps, Google Wallet and Android. I doubt Google, Bing or Facebook relies too much on tax write-offs, but I'm glad you're looking out for multi-billion dollar tech firms such as them.
  To your third point, I suppose it's purely a matter of opinion. If memory serves me right, ads were introduced in late 2007, over three years after Facebook's founding (that's about 27% of their existence without ads), with newsfeed ads following in 2011. And I didn't mean to suggest that Facebook itself would consider extending the (hypothetical) program, only that supporters (which always seem to be paid search professionals, strange!) might begin politicking to get grants for small businesses, churches, etc.
  To your fifth point, I don't believe I've ever heard or read someone refer to any Forrester data as "misleading" - Facebook was unequivocally the lowest-ranked marketing channel in their survey, regardless of the gap between the highest and lowest. Forrester's VP and Principal Analyst himself recommended that marketers change course, which is underscored by Social Media Examiner's annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report which has consistently shown that marketers are unsure whether their Facebook efforts are effective. But, to your point, 395 survey respondents is admittedly a small sample size.
  I hope you'll trust my recommendation that the primary concern of a fundraiser should be to make sure their current donors feel appreciated (a strategy that could absolutely include Facebook!), rather than optimizing an ad campaign.
  I'm sure any number of professionals will tell you that aspects of their trades are not "tremendously difficult" - there's probably nothing inherently difficult about plumbing or accounting, but I'd rather stick to what I know during my day-to-day activities, and I think fundraisers should do the same.
  Unless, of course, you support grants like these so that the recipients will feel compelled to utilize your services in order to properly implement them. :)
  I'd love see some case studies from your nonprofit clients who had success running a Facebook ad campaign, in the form of increased revenue and donor loyalty - would be happy publish the data on this blog!

• Mark Fiore

  As an online marketer with experience working on campaigns with Adwords, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, Linked for for-profit and non-profits I have to say I disagree with almost you’re entire article. 1.You said Facebook’s entire monetization platform is based on paid search. While you are correct you left out that so is Googles’. So is Bings’. So is pretty much everyone’s network today. Facebook’s network, like Googles, is relatively fixed to keep running. By that I mean it costs nearly the same amount to show an ad that generates $2 a click as it does to show an ad that generates $20 a click. The only reason the cost per click changes is because industries are bidding on them and are willing to pay a certain amount to get those clicks. 2.Google’s Grants are not money that google gives away, but rather money that Google doesn’t charge for in the form of clicks. But they still get more of a benefit from it in the form of tax write-offs. In fact their Grant program will no longer accept new applicants when their write-offs are maxed. Facebook would gain the same tax benefit for the same ‘cost’. Also, Google Grant’s cap your max cost-per-click at $2. Now they do take quality score into account, a metric to give more priority at lower costs to keywords that Google deems more relevant, which sort of forces you to not-spam. You could, but you would get little from doing it because other companies bidding on those words would have much higher priority than you. Your ads might not even make first page if they are just spam. 3.They are not making Facebook worse as ads have been a part of their model since shortly after their inception. I’m not saying ads are enjoyable but it does keep Facebook free for the user. Like Google, the Facebook grant would have no reason to extend beyond non-profits. Facebook’s model is not hurting small business or hospitals. Their platform allows you to target only your target market and if you don’t do a good job of that it is your fault, not Facebook’s. Also, churches in the United States are tax-exempt and schools are funded through Uncle Sam, so not the same as non-profits. 4.Ads in your newsfeed does not have anything to do with non-profits. Those ads would exist whether Facebook gave grants out or not. Yes Facebook’s network has a tremendously lower click-through-rate than Adwords Search but that case is the same no matter where the money is coming from. Since you only pay per click it doesn’t matter. 5.Your Forester Research link is misleading. The top surveyed channel was only a 3.84 compared to Facebook’s 3.54. Since the study is out of 5 and their difference is only .3 that difference is incredibly minor. Since all were so closely grouped together the survey was probably riddled with outliers on either end of the spectrum for each marketing channel. 6.Creating good Ad campaigns is actually not tremendously difficult. However, companies like mine exist because people like you think it is or would rather spend the time to manage it on managing their own company. Again, this is the same on all networks. 7.I’m not going to pretend that we don’t live in a very ‘Give that to me’ society but generally speaking, non-profits are in it to make a difference, not pad their own pockets like most companies. There are exceptions of course but generally speaking non-profits are not selling a product or service for a profit, they get money by raising it with benefits, grants, fundraisers. So the ‘shinny object’ argument does apply to society but not this situation. Also, as I said in point #1, this helps Facebook as well in the form of a tax write-off and it is not a giveaway in the same way as me giving you $100. From my experience there are plenty of non-profits, some I manage currently, that would benefit from Facebook Grants. It would not only benefit them, it would benefit who ever they are helping in their organization and it would even help Facebook.

• Javier

  Good article! We are currently using the google ads grant for our military initiative - G.I. Money. It's definitely not easy to manage, but it has been beneficial. It'd be interesting to see if FB creates a similar offering, but in all honesty, FB could disappear tomorrow and we wouldn't miss it. FB has not done anything to help us reach supporters. Also, great point about websites. I hate to see small businesses put "all their eggs" into a platform they don't own. Thanks!

• Wendell Gustafson

  Interesting article, some good points and always good advice to be careful about what one's wishes might bring. No doubt the Google AdWords grant program does drive this mindset towards FB. Your comment, though, about $10,000 not going far with AdWords hasn't been my experience, given the $2 cost-per-click limit, and I doubt I'm alone. That's Google's way of protecting their revenue stream, I believe, and it has made it hard to spend much on, and get much visibility from, the most desirable keywords in my search world.