Click here to view the calendar in a browser. It will open the google calendar so you can view it. You can also add it to your own Google calendar right from that screen (if you use Google Calendar).

Click here to download the .ics version of the calendar to import into your online calendar (Google, Yahoo, iCal, Outlook, etc.)

Please read the complete instructions before continuing.

Instructions for importing the .ics file into your calendar (download instructions as a PDF):

The key: FOCUS.

Set a small, achievable goal of a specific amount of money for a specific item or purpose.

“We need to raise $250 for a new office printer. Click here to donate $10.00!” is much more effective than “Please support us on #GivingTuesday!” The second phrase doesn’t contain any specifics that would make anyone want to donate.

Create a short, compelling email message to send out to prospective donors detailing the item or project, why it’s needed, how it will help your organization, and how people can donate. Be very specific about telling them how to donate–you don’t want any confusion when it comes to donating.

If you have time and ability, create a short video explaining the same thing.

Use this text (portions of it as appropriate) and the video across all your social media channels leading up to and on Giving Tuesday. Don’t be afraid to post a LOT on Giving Tuesday itself. Many nonprofits will be posting a great deal more than usual, and that is expected.

Make sure the online donation process is easy and streamlined. Donors should be able to get to your campaign page or donate page from anywhere on the web and complete their donation with just a few clicks.

Send receipts and thank-yous automatically by email and whatever other method(s) you employ.

Convey your progress on social media as the day progresses and you get closer to your goal. Thank people on social media as they are donating (where and as appropriate). Your fans want to know how close you’re getting to reaching the goal!

Once you’ve reached your goal, celebrate! Let everyone know THEY are responsible for your success. Send another email and post on social media.

Once you’ve purchased the item or completed the project, be sure to send an email with an update and another thank you, and post on social media. This shows donors (and people who didn’t donate) that you did what you’d said you would do, and that you are a good steward of peoples’ donations.

Good luck!

What are the fees?

UPDATE December 6, 2017!!! Based on early reporting from some organizations, and what Facebook released in its Social Good Forum on November 29, ALL FEES will be waived on donations made through Facebook’s giving tools. That means no 5% fee to Facebook to pay for their platform and reach. AND no 3% credit card processing fees. Facebook is going to absorb all fees, so that 100% of every donation actually goes to your organization. This is HUGE!

The first question! The total fees (Facebook’s fee plus credit card processing fees) are about 5%. This is less than some online giving platforms, but more expensive than just using a plain service like PayPal or Stripe. However, you have the potential to reach a much larger donor base through Facebook, and they are providing the secure environment for your donation to take place.

This also allows supporters to create their own campaigns and fundraisers for your organization, also within Facebook, and share them. This is really the biggest benefit of setting up this feature on your Facebook page—it puts the power of fundraising in your supporters’ hands, and that is where the real power of social giving lies.

Click here to see some screenshots and get an explanation of the process from Facebook.

It takes about 1 week to get approved. So get started NOW! #GivingTuesday is coming up on November 28, and for that day, Facebook is waiving ALL fees, AND the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is matching donations!

Apply here!

Instructions

Click on the page you want to get signed up. It will tell you what steps need to be completed before you can start collecting donations. The first two, page verification and community standards review, are pretty easy and fast. The last one, donations account, is what can take about a week to get approved. For that, you’ll need all of the following information at once (you can’t save your application, so if you don’t have something, you’ll have to start over later.)

• Your organization’s official name, address, contact info, tax ID, and nonprofit category
• Your CEO or executive director’s name, date of birth, and business address.
• A legible bank statement or official bank letter dated within the last 3 months.

This SEEMS like a lot of details. But ANY tool you use to collect donations is going to require this information so that it can put money in your bank account—just look at it that way.

Get your organization’s application completed, then wait. Once you’re approved, you’ll be able to collect donations through your Facebook page. See it in action here and here. You can also continue to collect donations normally through your website and other channels that do not involve Facebook. So even if you are ONLY doing this to take advantage of the #GivingTuesday promotions, that’s reason enough. And you may be surprised how many other people will donate this way.

The Google for Nonprofits Program offers eligible organizations access to free versions of paid Google products. These tools can help nonprofits find new donors and volunteers, work more efficiently, and get supporters to take action.

Are you eligible?

• Be a registered charitable organization in one of more than 50+ countries (US, Canada and Mexico included). For US charities, that means you must be a 501(c)(3) organization.
• Be registered with TechSoup (quick, free and easy signup; verifies your nonprofit status)
• NOT be a governmental entity, hospital, health care organization, school, childcare center, academic institution or university (Google has a separate program for educational institutions)
• Fiscally sponsored organizations are not eligible.

Tools You Can Use

When you are approved for a Google for Nonprofits account, you are instantly eligible to enroll in all of these services and tools. Learn about them and the different ways your organization can benefit.

G Suite for Nonprofits

G Suite (formerly Google Apps) includes tools you can already use for free, like:

• Google Drive (for file storage and organization)
• Docs (like Microsoft Word)
• Slides (like PowerPoint)
• Forms (for collecting non-confidential data)
• Sheets (like Excel)
• Sites (rudimentary website builder for creating wikis or very simple web pages)
• Hangouts (video conferencing/screen sharing collaboration on any device—computer, phone, tablet—with up to 25 users
• Calendar (powerful scheduling and collaboration for your team)
• Google Analytics (tracking of visitors to your site and their behavior while there)

In addition, you get features that are normally only available to paying customers, like:

• Gmail email hosting (host email @yourdomain on Google’s servers and use the gmail interface and tools to manage your organization’s email)
• 30GB file storage per user (free version is 10GB)
• 24/7 support by phone, chat, and email

And some features available ONLY to Google for Nonprofits members, like:

• YouTube for Nonprofits (Add links and donation buttons to videos)
• OneToday (donation campaigns with NO processing fees)
• Google Ad Grants (Run text ads on Google Search results with in-kind advertising budget every month – up to $10,000 in kind monthly!)
• Free video production services with YouTube Spaces (only in Los Angeles and New York currently)

Google’s priority is giving your nonprofit team tools to efficiently collaborate from anywhere, in real time, with this completely web-based cloud-based productivity suite. For example, multiple users can be working from different locations on one grant proposal, slide presentation or spreadsheet. You can store files in Drive and give different levels of access to different employees or volunteers. Each user can have his or her own google calendar, but also utilize a shared or organizational calendar. Use public and private calendars to keep track of what’s happening across your organization—even in multiple locations.

10 Tips for Getting The Most Out of Google for Nonprofits

1. Really utilize your Google Grants. Learn the ins and outs of the Google Adwords program so you can be successful. It’s tempting to just “throw spaghetti at the wall” because you’re not spending “real” money, but you won’t get good results if you don’t know what you’re doing.
2. Do specific fundraising campaigns within OneToday, but keep your normal fundraising channels open on your website (PayPal, credit card donations, vehicle donations, etc.).
3. Definitely use Gmail servers to host your organization’s email!! There is no server in the world more secure, better at filtering spam and easier to use than Google’s. If your organization is still using a @yahoo or @gmail address, there’s no excuse—get rid of that unprofessional email address and start using emails@yourdomain.org.
4. Get everybody using Google Calendar. If your entire organization’s calendar can be managed in one place, scheduling everything from staff meetings to clinic hours to sick days will be so much easier. The levels of customization are endless, and you can completely control who can view and edit what calendars. So you can have a calendar to manage your clinic hours, your staff PTO usage, your public events, even a personal calendar so you can squeeze in a haircut every now and then.
5. Use Google Drive to store important files in the cloud, and give different levels of access to different users. Make your logo files available to your marketing staff only, or create a private folder just for HR personnel records. It’s all stored securely in the cloud and backed up regularly. You control access, everything is organized in one place, and you can still find what you need when you have staff turnover.
6. Utilize video. You know that video is the best medium for storytelling these days, and YouTube is the most popular platform by far. Normal YouTube users can’t put links to external pages in their videos—but you can. Choose the critical moment in your video to link viewers directly to your donation page, for example, or take them to a foster application.
7. Use Google Forms to collect and synthesize data. You won’t want to collect any sensitive information on Google Forms—like credit card numbers or social security numbers. But you can use it for adoption applications, contact us forms, volunteer applications and more. The results can be emailed to you, and also are dumped into a Sheets file (like an Excel spreadsheet) where you can easily see graphs and charts of your results (really handy if you’re collecting any demographic information or need to tabulate data for annual reports).
8. Utilize the support! With a GSuite account comes 24/7 access to actual, live people at Google who can help you. This is invaluable! If you need help, they can walk you through your problem—and they are used to “non-technical people.”
9. Utilize Google Analytics. It’s so much more than just how many “hits” your website gets. Learn the basics to gain insight into donors and track how they interact with your website, how they get there, when and why the leave and what holds their attention. This information will allow you to make your website even more effective.
10. Take the time to really use these tools. Even in this age of social media and online….everything, I still talk to many animal welfare professionals who feel that time spent online, especially time spent learning a new software tool, is time “taken away from the animals.” Consider this an investment of your time and energy, if not your hard-earned dollars. If you just sign up for all the tools and let it sit there, it can’t help your organization. But you will reap great rewards if you take the time to utilize the resources of the Google for Nonprofits program!

How to Change Your Facebook Page Template from Emily Garman on Vimeo.

So this is just a dummy page I’ve set up for training purposes. In this video I’ll show you how to change your Facebook page template.

This is only available for pages (not profiles or groups) and you must be an admin on your page.

Go to your page and click on “Settings.”

Click on “edit page”

And right here in the center is where you choose the template. “Standard” is the default, but if you click on “edit” you can choose from several templates available: standard, nonprofit, business, venues, politicians, services, restaurants and shopping. We’ll choose nonprofit.

If you click on view details, you can see more information about each template and you can select that template.

Look at the different notes about how it will change your page, and then click on “Apply template.”

Confirm the changes it’s going to make to your page, and click OK.

Just remember you can always switch this back to “standard” if you don’t like the changes. Honestly, it really doesn’t make any significant changes in the way the page looks to visitors–just the way the tabs and buttons appear.

Now you can edit your tabs and buttons. It will default to “use default tabs,” which just means they will appear in the order displayed below. But you can turn that off and/or you can order them differently either way, and change it any time you want. You can also remove any tabs you don’t use or need. (to do that, just click on “settings” for that tab, and turn the switch on “show page tab” to “off.” You can’t turn off all the tabs–some Facebook makes you keep.)

You’ll see the default Facebook tabs at the top–about, photos, events, etc. and then the ones you’ve added, or other ones that Facebook decides your page needs, after that. Some of these are different depending on which page template you choose.

So now you can go back and see what it looks like on your page. As you can see, it really doesn’t change the look of your page much at all–just the placement of some buttons and the tabs that appear.

If you just now changed to a nonprofit page template, you might not have had a Facebook donate button before. You want to make sure and set that up. Click on “add a button” to set up the donate button.

Choose “make a purchase or donation.” Choose “donate,” and enter the URL of the donate page you want to send people to. This could be the donate page on your website, or a PayPal page URL–be sure to send them directly to the page you want them to donate on–not to your main home page.

Make sure to fill in the rest of the areas on your page, the about section, operating hours and that sort of thing. And go ahead and remove any tabs that don’t have content or that you aren’t using.

So hopefully this is just the beginning of Facebook letting businesses and organizations have more control over their pages!

I’ve broken this into two parts. The first part shows you how to install the custom tab application on your page, and how to generate your custom pet list scroller from Petfinder.com. The second video shows you how to generate the Paypal button code.

These videos are about 12 minutes long, and there are a lot of steps involved–but it’s not too hard. You can do it! Just follow the steps one by one and you’ll be done in no time–with a really tricked out Facebook page!

The downside is that the fees can be pretty high (around 4-10% of each donation, in addition to credit card processing fees). You also may have to set up another type of account to accept money (For example, GoFundMe.com only uses Wepay.com to accept payments–you cant integrate with your existing Paypal account, Stripe account, etc.). Plus, users may not be familiar with the platform, so may be hesitant to give.

Finally, Facebook is getting into the game! As usual, this feature is not yet available to any organizations except the “big guys” (Charity:Water, HSUS, World Wildlife Fund, etc) but you can sign up your organization now to get notified when they roll it out to the rest of us.

Facebook has released some screenshots (see below) of what the campaigns look like. You can see a few in action at the National Multiple Sclerosis Society’s page and World Wildlife Fund’s page.

Basically, it works just like a GoFundMe campaign. You set up a timeframe, a goal amount, launch the campaign, and visitors can donate and share.

Facebook has not yet said what their fee will be, but they have said that their goal is to break even–not make a profit–so their fees will be on par with or lower than other services.

Facebook definitely has an ulterior motive here, besides just the desire to help you do good work. When you make a donation through Facebook, Facebook then has your credit card information on file. It’s secure, of course, but it’s on file, which makes it that much easier for you to make future purchases on Facebook. So if you want to purchase anything from ads to games to gift cards in the future on Facebook, well, it will be very easy because they have your payment information already stored! And whenever you purchase something on Facebook, Facebook makes money.

Get Ready

Facebook will be extending invitations to additional nonprofits sometime in early 2016, so not in time for #givingtuesday or end-of-year fundraising in 2015, unfortunately. But starting now, you can get on the list, and you can make sure your Facebook presence is ready. You can also start putting together text and images for your campaign so that you can be ready when the platform is opened to your organization.

Facebook says they will vet all participating nonprofits — you must be a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the US, have verified bank accounts and Facebook Pages, and comply with Facebook’s Community Standards. So make sure you have a Facebook page (NOT a profile!), that you are a 501(c)(3), and that you know your EIN number. You’ll need that information, plus just a few other basic pieces of info (address, email, website address, etc.) to sign up.

Fill out the form here to get on the list.

I think this will be a game-changer for our fundraising efforts. The easier we can make it for donors, the more likely they are to give. I’ve always said we need to enable people to give where they are, whenever they are moved to donate–and the vast majority of our donors are on Facebook (over 1 billion daily active users!!).

I’ll post updates as I learn new information, like release dates, image sizes for the platform, etc.

What are your thoughts and questions? Would you start using Facebook’s donation platform in lieu of another tool you’re using now?

They’re really not all that different, but the technology can sometimes be intimidating! Essentially, we need to get people to say “yes” to us. How do you get to the “yes” that involves a checkbook or credit card? Get them to say yes to something small first. Maybe that first “yes” is liking your page on Facebook. Maybe after they’ve been a fan for a few weeks, they’ll sign up to get your email updates. Maybe a little later they’ll sign a petition and share it with friends. Now they’ve said “yes” to you three or four times, and you’ve built a relationship. When you ask for something more, they’re way more likely to give.

The first contact you have with someone should NEVER be a solicitation. This is why buying an email list or a mailing list almost never works. People give to people they know and trust. Develop a relationship before you ask.

Make it easy

It’s so important to have a donate button or link prominently positioned on your website, and to make it highly visible and in the same location on ALL the pages of your site. Make it easy to see, easy to find, and give it an obvious name, like “Donate” or “Give.” Put a donate button everywhere—on your website, on Facebook, on your Youtube channel. Whenever people feel the urge to donate, you want them to be able to do it right then and there.

Photo courtesy of the SPCA of Texas. Note the logo in the bottom corner–always brand your photos.

Use powerful photos and video

Your visuals are the single most important part of any fundraising campaign. If you have a compelling photo of a cute animal, making eye contact with the camera, you’ve instantly made a connection with the donor. Humans are biologically programmed to react positively to faces, particularly of helpless creatures like babies and animals. A well-executed photo or video of an animal in need can open peoples’ wallets more effectively than just about anything you can write.

Be Specific

People respond the way you want them to when they feel they know all the facts and have all the information they need to make a decision. Be specific, take the guesswork out of it and you’ve made it a no-brainer for them to donate. You’ve removed all possible objections. Remove objections and eliminate questions and people will donate.

Give it a sense of urgency and timeliness

We see this all the time with retailers. “Only 3 more hours in this sale” or “Only 2 left at this price!” It works in our industry as well. We all know that if we can, we’ll procrastinate. Hold people accountable by giving them a deadline and a sense of urgency, which is usually completely legitimate. If you have an animal needing surgery, it can’t wait. But what if you’re raising money for a building or a vehicle? Well, lives are still at stake. For every day you don’t have that vehicle, you can’t transport animals from the local shelter to your shelter where they won’t be at risk for euthanasia.

If you’re raising money for something large, it helps a lot to break it into smaller sprints or campaigns. That way, people can experience the excitement of meeting a goal or milestone. If you need to raise $40,000, split it into campaigns of $5,000. You’ll get to celebrate 8 times (with one REALLY big celebration at the end!) and people are rewarded by the progress of small victories.

Set a Goal

Goals are critical for fundraising. If you don’t have a goal, you can’t know that you succeeded—and neither can your supporters. As human beings, we naturally want to associate with winners. Winners meet their goals and deliver results. If you set a goal of raising $1,000 and you do it, you are a winner. People see that you are successful, and that success is a magnet.

Thermometers or some other kind of progress meter on donation pages are HUGE incentives. If you’re almost to your goal, people want to be part of that success story, so they are more likely to donate. This is why it’s so important to always set a goal you know you can reach. Reaching a goal is amazing for volunteer and staff morale, too. It never hurts to have something to celebrate!

Say Thank-you and follow up

This is an opportunity to make another pitch! No one is ever as primed as RIGHT after they’ve given their support, so don’t be afraid to use the thank you email or thank you letter to tell them about your other programs or events coming up.

Send another email within 24 hours telling them some measurable result that happened as a result of their donation. This keeps more people interested and willing to give and participate in future campaigns. (by the way, emails have NOT replaced hand-written or mailed thank-you notes/letters.)

Public Thanks via Social Media

Most social media platforms have the ability to “tag” an individual or company in a post. This gives your donor public recognition, which most donors (particularly businesses) want. Always honor requests for anonymity, but use social media to promote and thank those who support your work.

Use these six strategies consistently in your social media fundraising campaigns, and they will be more effective. Above all, be specific, have a goal in mind, and communicate successes back to your donors to demonstrate good stewardship, and you’ll be rewarded with more funds to ultimately save more lives! For more tips, ideas and tutorials than I can ever fit in this article, subscribe to my blog at www.thesocialanimal.com.

1. Source: Blackbaud Charitable Giving Report: How Nonprofit Fundraising Performed in 2014 https://www.blackbaud.com/nonprofit-resources/charitablegiving

This is a screenshot of a portion of the list.

Many people use Gmail for person and business use. I know many of you use it because it’s free, easy and reliable.

Here’s the deal – about 5 million Google accounts and passwords appear to have been published on a Russian forum. Some of these seem to be old/invalid accounts, but the hacker claims that at least 60% of the information is valid.

So if you use gmail, you need to take action, but don’t panic.

The first thing you can do is check to see if your account is on the hacked list. You can check to see if your account is hacked here. Just input your email address and it will tell you. you do NOT have to put in your password here (never put your password into some random site that is asking for it!).

Whether or not your account was included, you STILL ought to change your password, just to be safe. Google is so big, it’s a constant target for hackers. So it’s a good idea to change your password frequently anyway, as inconvenient as it is!

The third thing you should do, especially if you are particularly concerned with security, is to enable 2-factor authentication on your Google/Gmail account. Sounds fancy, but it’s really easy.

2-factor authentication is basically a 2-step process for logging in where you enter your password, like you normally do, but then you also enter a passcode that is different each time, that is sent to your phone via text, voice or on a mobile app. It’s definitely a good idea, but obviously is a little more time-consuming. Here’s more info about it and how to turn it on.

Let me know if you have any questions or problems, and I hope none of your accounts were affected!

This question comes across my inbox a LOT—maybe more than just about any other question. With the permission of the original sender, I wanted to reprint the question (and provide an answer) here so everyone can get this information. The question is broken into several pieces, because (as with most things Facebook) it’s a complicated, multi-part issue!

Let’s get started.

The representative from the humane society writes:

“We set up many of our (Facebook) accounts quite some time ago and they weren’t, or you couldn’t at that time, set them up as business accounts.  I’ve spent hours trying to detach and untie personal associations with any accounts. My goal is that all social media/ web /vendors are independent business accounts as our organization, not tied to any person’s personal account, so we don’t have management issues as our top management changes.”

So let me first address this, because it’s a decision we all have to make. What happens if we add someone as an admin, and then they get mad at us, and delete US as an admin on our own page? What happens if they delete our page all together?

This seems like the logical thing to do. It makes sense to want to keep your business accounts separate from your personal accounts.

However, in Facebook-land, this is NOT the way to go about things. For better or worse, Facebook wants you to administer your pages via your profiles (i.e., your organization page should be managed by your own personal account).

It IS possible to create a new business page with a separate email address, that is completely separate from yours or any other personal account. But this is not a good idea, for a few reasons.

First, if you do this—if you create a separate account that is not associated with any personal profile, you will have very limited ability to function and interact on Facebook. For example, you will not have access to the “search” feature at all. This means you won’t be able to interact with any other pages on Facebook or find anything without knowing the exact URL. Since the whole point of Facebook is to interact, not just post in a vacuum, if you set up your page this way you will not be able to use Facebook in its fullest.

You may feel this is more secure than having multiple staff/volunteer accounts as managers of your page. But if you set your page up in this way, you’ll have to give everyone the email address and password to login anyway—and then they could still modify or delete your account. So unless you are the ONLY person who ever has access to your page, you’re always going to be a bit at risk.

And that’s not a good idea either! Because if something ever happened to you and someone else needed to step in and take over the page, they wouldn’t be able to. (Make sure there’s always more than one admin on you account for this reason)

The best way—the Facebook-approved way—to set up your page is as follows:

Login to your own personal Facebook account. Create your page. You will be the “Admin.” Then you can add other people (via their own personal Facebook accounts) as various levels of administrator—there are Admin, Editor, Moderator, Advertiser and Analyst levels, each with various levels of permissions and abilities on the page. As long as you give other people lower admin privileges than yourself, they will never be able to remove you or any other user from the page.

This protects your page and your autonomy, but allows other people to help you manage the page.

Can I change our existing organization Facebook to a Business account or disconnect my personal page?

If you’ve set up your business/organization on Facebook as a profile (which is intended for personal use only), you CAN convert it to a page. This post explains how to convert a Facebook profile into a page.

If you’re wanting to simply remove your own profile as an admin from your page, though, I would advise against this for the reasons explained above. You CAN remove yourself as an admin, but if all admins are removed from a page, then the page will have no administrators. You will not be able to manage it, to re-add yourself as an admin, or remove the page.

This is a HUGE problem for many organizations. It’s pretty much impossible to contact Facebook and have them restore you as an admin, or remove the page. So you essentially have an “orphan” page with no admins that you can’t manage or remove.

If you then created a new page for your organization (which would be your only option at that point), it would be very confusing to people searching for your page. They’d find your old, orphan page first (having seniority, it would always show up first).

Remember, there’s no problem with having other admins on the page via their own personal accounts, as long as you make them a lesser admin level than yourself.

Visitors to your Facebook page will never see any information about who the admins are on your page, unless you wish to show that information publicly.

If your concern is that you want someone to have admin privileges on your page, but that person doesn’t have a Facebook account, and they don’t want to create one, then frankly, that person shouldn’t be an admin on your page. If they aren’t using Facebook themselves, and don’t want to, then they really aren’t qualified to be an admin on your page!

To recap:

Make sure your page is created by you, logged in under your personal Facebook account. By creating the page, you are the main Admin.

Add other Facebook users (via their names, if you’re “friends” on Facebook, or via their email addresses, if you’re not). Make sure to assign them an administrator level that is lesser than your own—that way you always retain ultimate control over the page.

Please let me know if you have any questions about this! I’m here to help.

By the way, here’s Facebook’s help page on the topic of Page Roles.