My dog is terribly sick and I have no money for vet bills. I want to ask my friends and community to help me out and am wondering if there’s a way to do that on Facebook instead of GoFundMe or Indiegogo?
Sorry to hear about your dog. You might check with your local vet to see if they have some options about payment, but asking your friends, family and online community to help out is reasonable too and has certainly become popular in the last few years. You name the two big ones in this regard too; GoFundMe and Indiegogo. Turns out that Facebook recently launched its own version of this called “Fundraiser” too.
I’ll show you the steps involved in setting up a fundraiser, but before we go further, you should pay attention not just to the platform but also to the fees involved. For example, GoFundMe charges 7.9% + $0.30 per donation, while Indiegogo charges 5% plus the payment processor fee (3-5% per processor). Both are about 8%, plus or minus a few points. Facebook, as you’ll see, charges 6.9% plus $0.30/donation, so it’s actually cheaper, which means you’ll get more of the money you raise.
But let’s get to that point. To test this out, I tried to set up a caffeine fund knowing that Facebook would quite likely reject it. Still let me go through all the steps, though, so it’s all good. To start, look on your account menu and you’ll see a new entry:
See it near the bottom? “Create Fundraiser”. That’s what you want to choose to create a facebook fundraiser, so give it a click!
In my case, I’ll choose “Yourself” but notice you can set up a fundraiser for someone else or a non-profit, which is nice. Click the right choice and you can proceed. Much of the setup of the entire fundraiser is now on a single screen, so you’ll want to spend some time on this screen to get things just so:
To start out, I’ll pick a better photo for my coffee fundraiser, The above one seems to be a pretty random choice from my photo library. That’s done by clicking on the small “Edit” tab on the lower right edge of the photo shown.
You can choose a better photo or even upload a new one specific for this purpose. In most cases, selecting a photo specifically for your fundraising efforts is probably going to yield the best results. To do that, click on “Upload New Photo“, above.
Next you’ll want to select the correct category. Choose thoughtfully as Facebook has already done a good job of figuring out most primary categories (and notice there’s a “Pet Medical” category too, so you’re not alone in asking for some help covering an exceptional vet bill):
Spend some time entering a good, no really great title, and a description that’s straightforward and honest. Avoid offering up any reward or benefit for people who choose to contribute as that’s a violation of Facebook’s terms for a fundraiser.
Then specify an end date for your fundraiser. If you need to pay the vet bill by May 31, that’s your end date for the campaign, for example.
Finally, take a moment and double check that everything’s right, there are no typos, no misspellings, that your grammar is correct and that what you say makes sense and is coherent with both who you are and what you believe will be engaging and interesting to your friends and community.
Here’s my coffee fundraiser effort:
Looks good? Click on “Create” to proceed and actually start your fundraiser!
Well, not quite. At this point the Facebook Fundraiser team needs to review what you’ve created and either approve it or reject it:
Can you donate a buck towards my coffee fund? Well, sort of. You can’t do it through Facebook, as you can see from the message I got a few hours later:
Not surprised, actually, and if I were on the Facebook team I’d have rejected this cockamanie coffee campaign too! But if you’re really intrigued and want to buy me a cup of coffee you can actually do that, just not through Facebook: Buy Dave a Cup of Coffee. And thanks!
I made a fundraiser for pet medical today and i canot find it. I am still in review but would like to know how to find it! TIA
Hi dave, that was very helpful, i have a cat that i rescued from the street 2 y. Ago, im in a fixed income, i still havent been able to take him to a vet, and he have dry skin and he pull his hair and always itching, plus his hair gets matted due to his dry skin, but i tried to ask a friend to make a go fund me acct for my cat so i can take him to the vet, and later i found out that the beneficiary it was going to be her, i asked her why? She say because she was the one making the acct. So i contacted go fund me and told them about her scam, i think they finally took the account out, so, i dont know if im going to be able to get any money to support my cat, i love him to death, i dont want to call animal rescue because they put animals to sleep, in other words they kill them, i hardly can buy him food, but im still hanging there with him. Thanks for teaching us how to make the acct. Even though i dont know if i should make one because i dont know if anyone will help. But thanks again, very helpful tips, god bless