Entering Donations Made via Facebook

Emmet OConlon

Hello, all!


Any opinions or thoughts on how to enter donations made via Facebook? We are having a challenge because most donors only give a name, which is not enough to match them to any existing donor records. We've considered creating a new constituent called "Facebook Donors" for the gifts, we've considered entering them all under Facebook and soft crediting the donors, and we've considered creating a record for every single donor (but shot this one down--some donors on the report only had a last name!).


I'd be very interested to know how others are handling this; thank you!

Angela Tuttle 2

We have been having this discussion as well. Currently we try to match the ones we can and create new records for those we cant.   

Ron Morelli

My organization has created a constituent called Facebook Donations, and we place the gift under that.  


I don't find enough information from Facebook donations to send acknowledgements to, so it's basically lumped and dumped when it comes in.

Phillip Bicknell

I agree with the creation of a Facebook Anonymous constituent - gifts can be sorted out later should you subsequently identify a supporter.


Meanwhile, where it's known, we have in the Links section of Phone Numbers the hyperlink to a supporter's Facebook profile.

Ryan Hyde

Here are my personal guidelines for these gifts:

1. Match the people you can match (unique names, rare cases where there's an email to match)
2. If you can't match them and they have an email address, create a new record
3. If you can't match them and they don't have an email address, put the gift on an Anonymous Donor record (I did not create a special one for Facebook donations because I use a Facebook related appeal to identify them, but that's more to do with your standard practices than anything)
4. For all 'anonymous' gifts, add the original donor name to the Reference field
5. For all gifts related to someone's birthday or other fundraiser, add the name of the fundraiser to the reference field
   1. In cases where you're adding the donor name AND the fundraiser name to the reference field, list the donor name first
6. Create a gift attribute called "Facebook Permalink" and import the permalink as a description to that attribute for each gift. This allows anyone to copy/paste that link to find the original post, list of donors to that post, and potentially allow them to click through to the donor's profile for future identification and matching.

Aaron Rothberg

For what it's worth, I follow the exact same process as Ryan describes in his steps 1 through 5, but his step 6 is a good idea too.

Ryan Hyde

Thanks Aaron! I just thought of step 6 last month when I was wrangling one of the files. I think it'll be useful in the future, and it's definitely an easy thing to add to the import file.

Sunshine Reinken Watson

Ryan Hyde:

Here are my personal guidelines for these gifts:

1. Match the people you can match (unique names, rare cases where there's an email to match)
2. If you can't match them and they have an email address, create a new record
3. If you can't match them and they don't have an email address, put the gift on an Anonymous Donor record (I did not create a special one for Facebook donations because I use a Facebook related appeal to identify them, but that's more to do with your standard practices than anything)
4. For all 'anonymous' gifts, add the original donor name to the Reference field
5. For all gifts related to someone's birthday or other fundraiser, add the name of the fundraiser to the reference field
   1. In cases where you're adding the donor name AND the fundraiser name to the reference field, list the donor name first
6. Create a gift attribute called "Facebook Permalink" and import the permalink as a description to that attribute for each gift. This allows anyone to copy/paste that link to find the original post, list of donors to that post, and potentially allow them to click through to the donor's profile for future identification and matching.

 

Thank you, Ryan!!!


Since we don't record the money until the check is received or the funds are transfered, I'm taking the Facebook report and entering in Giving Tuesday Facebook gifts as pledges. Our gift officers are eager to put known donors into the pipeline.

Ryan Hyde

You're welcome, Sunshine


But boy-oh-boy, I sure do dislike adding pledges for this kind of thing. That said, if your gift officers are eager to get these folks into the communication stream ASAP (which makes sense this time of year), then that's the best way to do it. The only other way I can think of would be to add these as gift type 'other' and then don't worry about matching them back when the payment actually comes in, but I'm not sure that's any cleaner in this case (that's how I do United Way yearly campaign gifts). 

Sunshine Reinken Watson

Ryan Hyde:

You're welcome, Sunshine


But boy-oh-boy, I sure do dislike adding pledges for this kind of thing. That said, if your gift officers are eager to get these folks into the communication stream ASAP (which makes sense this time of year), then that's the best way to do it. The only other way I can think of would be to add these as gift type 'other' and then don't worry about matching them back when the payment actually comes in, but I'm not sure that's any cleaner in this case (that's how I do United Way yearly campaign gifts). 

I agree. Unfortunately, "Other" is taken in our system. Pledges are the cleanest way indeed. I have no idea when the payment will come in, and they need to see the gifts in NXT.

Emmet OConlon

Thanks, all, for the input. We are mostly using the same procedure Ryan describes, except

1. We have created a Gift Attribute for the names of the Facebook donors who both did not provide email and could not be identified by our fundraisers
2. We also have a constituent Facebook Donors specifically, since there are so, so many FB donations

Again, thank you all :-)

Lisa Slawinski

While chiming in a bit late to this conversation, I'm wondering how Ryan is including the fundraiser in the reference field?  I don't have a Reference field in my batching options.  I have an Item Description field which I enter the number of donors and to what FR they gave (most recently, 44 donors giving to 6 different fundraisers).   I've been stumped how to track the individual fundraisers either by whether an individual or we create it.  We don't have EveryDay Hero or TeamRaiser as, at this point, there's no need.  I created Facebook Payments as a constituent and soft credit all donors whether or not they include any other contact information besides a name.  I thought about creating an Appeal for each, but then poo-pooed that idea as I can just query on the constituent.


What am I missing?


Lisa

Ryan Hyde

Well if you're just entering gifts into RE via batch, you could always add the reference field. However, my import process involves importing the permalink of the donation. Each fundraiser should have a unique permalink, so I could look up the information that way in RE. 

Lisa Slawinski

Hi Ryan, can you clarify to which Reference Field you refer?  I know I could list the permalink in the individual's gift notes field under the Miscellaneous tab, but that doesn't help much with reporting.


Lisa

Ryan Hyde

The reference field in the gift record? If you open up a gift, it should be on the first tab in the upper right. I suppose it's possible your DBA has disabled that field altogether for some reason, but it should be there. 


Also, I add the permalink to the gift attribute's, not the donor attributes. Insofar as it's possible, you should keep all info related to a gift on the gift's record. It's too easy to lose track of otherwise.

Lisa Slawinski

Ryan,


I am the Database Administrator and do not see a Reference Field anywhere in the gift record.  We have RE 7.96 and I batch all gifts in database view.  If Facebook is the main constituent and there are several permalinks from the multiple donations, are you saying you list each individual permalink in the Attributes field so at least to capture through what means donors are giving?


Lisa


 

Lisa Slawinski

Ryan,


After some research, it looks like you are talking about what I see as the Item Description field.  Yes?

 

Ryan Hyde

Reference is a standard field that has existed forever, basically. You must have it hidden in your instance of RE. Go to Config > Fields > Gifts, and then scroll down to the Reference line. The second checkbox is likely checked, making it hidden on all records. If you want to use it, uncheck that box. 

Ryan Hyde

Here's where it will be on a gift record. (Susan Applegate is our dummy record for testing purposes, FYI)



 

Ryan Hyde

To answer your other question, I import each gift. I don't group all gifts that I can't link to a donor in the database together. So each individual gift has the original donor's name in the reference field, and each gift has the permalink associated with the form the donor gave through in the attributes. I would highly recommend doing this entry via import rather than batch because batch entry this way would be much, much more labor intensive. 

Sarah Krenicki

This is a great thread! I have been following the same procedure as Ryan when it comes to Facebook gifts, but have also been soft crediting the person who started the fundraiser. It's worked well thus far, having only had a few fundraisers happen for us via FB.


My concern is that since the money comes to us in one lump sum from Facebook, (and the individual donors get the tax credit from facebook, so they do not get a receipt from us) it might become difficult to reconcile with our finance dept - they will have, say, a $500 deposit from Facebook on their ledger, and we will have about 10 $50 gifts on ours. We do have the gifts linked to the particular FB fundraiser via an appeal, so a report can be run, but I know it's generally a standard practice to hard credit the "real" donor - and wouldn't the "real" donor in this case be Facebook? Does anyone have a constituent called "Facebook Fundraiser?" To me, it seems silly to do so, but I just want to make sure I'm following best practice here. 


Thanks!

Ryan Hyde

No, I don't think the 'real' donor is Facebook, just as it's not Benevity, The United Way, Truist, or any other third party passthru organization. The real donor is the individual who made the decision to give money to your organization, regardless of how it was received. So I would say you're already doing things correctly, and I may think about your soft credit system, though I typically avoid soft credits as much as humanly possible. 


Another alternative might be to make a gift attribute with data type "constituent" and link to the person you're soft crediting that way. It's certainly worth thinking about.

Jahna Balk 2

Hi,


You can add the gift reference field to your batch if it's not already included. I have included a screenshot below on how to change your batch fields in RE. You access this by clicking on the little triangle/ruler/protractor symbol in an existing batch, or by creating a new batch template.

Tiffany Harder

We are entering our gifts under a record for the PayPal Giving Fund since that is where the money comes from and in the instances where a participant has reached out to us about their event we do code it accordingly, but we are not worrying about soft crediting donors since there is no way to be consistent with the very little information provided.  Essentially we are treating it the same, as for instance, United Way donations that are anonymous.  


We have a lot of Team Raiser events and so sometimes these donations have created a unique issue for us when participants fundraiser on FB alongside the TR.  We are just doing our best to help the participants know there is a time delay in receiving the money and that if they don't reach out to us we won't have enough information to credit their event.  


Tiffany

Madeleine Holdsworth

We also have a Facebook constituent record and soft credit the donors we recognize from their transaction report.  We don't receive that many contributions from Facebook at this time and the donations are small.  It's a bit of a pain since Facebook doesn't release the funds until they reach a $100 threshold.

Roma Sharma 3

Hi Please will you be able to share the import template for the facebook data?  

Thanks

Regards

R

Tiffany Schroyer 2

Has anyone used Tribute's to link the donations to the person who created the fundraiser?

Alisa Forman

@Tiffany Schroyer Very late to this party but I have the same question. My plan is to do that (we actually just got our first notification of a Facebook fundraiser!) I'm planning to create a tribute IHO Individual's Birthday and link the gifts there, wondering if there's any reason not to.

My other question and I know there's a good chance this won't get answered, relates to Facebook donations but also Benevity, Charity Aid Foundation, etc. where they take out fees. We use batch for all gifts and finance reconciles by matching the bank deposit with the amount in the batch. We don't have a good system (yet) for accounting for fees taken out. We want to credit the donor for their full donation even though we didn't receive it but then our numbers don't match…