May 3, 2010 | Read Time: 1 minute
Birger Stamperdahl, director of marketing at Give2Asia in San Francisco, offers an interesting perspective on why nonprofit groups should avoid using social networks for direct fund-raising appeals — fees.
When donors give donations by check, there are no transaction fees associated with processing their donations.
If they give online through a charity’s Web site, about 3 percent is usually taken off the top by vendors such as PayPal.
Mr. Stamperdahl notes that nonprofit groups see overhead costs rise even higher on social networks.
“With Facebook, you add on Network for Good’s fee,” he said. “Twitter services have similar fees. Text donations work differently, but it can be expensive.”
As a result, Mr. Stamperdahl advises nonprofit groups to use social networking sites as relationship builders and traffic drivers instead of as direct fund-raising channels.
“In the end, we would prefer to drive people to give donations directly on our Web site or, better yet, send us a check,” he said. “Our appeals on social-networking sites like Twitter generally avoid donation services and (instead) drive traffic to our site.”
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