Charity audience
GoFundMe
Leading fundraising platform partners with Meta on integration to drive more donations to charities
GoFundMe is a community-powered fundraising platform helping people and charities share their stories, connect with supporters and create lasting impact. It's charity fundraising software, GoFundMe Pro, offers flexible tools to inspire giving, reach wider audiences and drive change – enabling over USD 40 billion in help for communities worldwide. GoFundMe and Meta partnered to pilot a new integration to improve visibility of charitable fundraisers powered by GoFundMe and GoFundMe Pro on Meta technologies.
Challenge
Charities acknowledge that it's getting harder and more expensive to acquire new donors1. Many are seeing diminishing returns using the same channels and tactics that once worked. GoFundMe sought a new and better way to help charities reach and inspire potential donors, while permitting them to receive donations on the fundraising platform of their choice. Charities also wanted to capture more data to improve their fundraising effectiveness, including gaining deeper visibility into who was donating and why, enabling smarter outreach and longer-term donor relationships.
Solution
GoFundMe partnered with Meta to pilot a new integration, which enables charitable fundraisers to be easily shared to Facebook and Instagram, whether hosted on GFM.com or on the participating charity's website, powered by GoFundMe Pro. With the new integration, every time a supporter shares a link to the approved fundraiser on Facebook or Instagram, the post will receive special features such as a clear call to action to Donate and a donation progress bar, showing near real-time campaign progress updates. Features like these can help increase conversions and boost donations. When supporters click Donate, they are directed to the original campaign page to make their donation, simplifying the process for participants and allowing charities to collect donations and donor information in one place.
Results
Not only does the GoFundMe integration harness the extensive reach and distribution of Meta technologies, it also satisfies charities' preference to receive donations on their fundraising platform of choice. This dual advantage led to a meaningful increase in donations from social channels from participating charities. When charities receive donations on their fundraising platform of choice, they receive data and insights in their preferred format, equipping organisations to more effectively turn these donors into long-term advocates of their cause.
59%
The average increase in donation volume from social channels for charities who turned on the GoFundMe Pro-Meta integration in 2024, compared to the same time period in 2023.
"Charities are facing unprecedented challenges acquiring new donors. Through our integration with Meta, we aim to help organisations break through that barrier – turning awareness into measurable action. Charities are already seeing a significant lift in donations from social channels, proving that when giving is easier and more visible, generosity grows."
Arnie Katz, Chief Product Officer, GoFundMe
Learnings
- Meet your audience where they already are: To reach people, you need to use the channels they use. This new integration surfaces charitable fundraisers to potential donors on Facebook and Instagram, where they are already spending time, rather than requiring charities and their supporters to adopt a new behaviour.
- Let your supporters help with marketing: GoFundMe research from 2024 verifies the power of social sharing, revealing that each fundraiser share by an organiser increases donations by an average of USD 100. Working with Meta, GoFundMe removed extra steps in the user journey and made improvements to the donor’s online experience to make sharing of fundraisers to Facebook and Instagram better and easier, creating a viral loop.
- Understand that trust is shifting: Research shows that trust is changing. Individuals trust people in their network more than they trust traditional brands.2 Social media fundraisers benefit from this peer-to-peer trust dynamic, helping causes get discovered and supported organically.
- Keep experimenting with new tools: Being an early adopter to a new solution or technique can mean getting a jump on those competing for your audience's attention. Charities that adopt new tools, such as the offsite donations tools on Meta technologies, are well positioned to receive additional donations from supporters.
