Fundraising with Social Media

A Facebook Fundraiser allows you to share your story and collect donations directly through Facebook. When you create a Facebook Fundraiser that is linked to your Bike MS fundraising page, donations show up in real-time and count towards your fundraising total. The benefits of creating a linked Facebook Fundraiser from your Bike MS dashboard include:

• Seamless sync to your event Fundraising Center so you can reach your goal, improve your ranking, and receive prizes
• The ability to invite all your Facebook friends to your fundraiser
• The ability to communicate with your donors on your Facebook Fundraiser page, by posting updates and thanking them for their donations

Non-linked Facebook and Instagram Fundraising Tools

Facebook has a variety of fundraising tools including donate buttons and birthday fundraisers. Instagram has a donate sticker to use on stories. These fundraisers initiated on Facebook or Instagram are not linked to your event fundraising and will not count towards your Bike MS fundraising total. The only way to link donations received on Facebook to your Bike MS fundraiser is to start the fundraiser from your Bike MS dashboard. If you have any questions about non-linked Facebook or Instagram fundraisers, please contact our Fundraising Support team.

Creating a Linked Facebook Fundraiser

When you register for each year’s event, you will need to create a new Facebook Fundraiser through the Bike MS website. There are three ways to set up your linked Facebook Fundraiser:

Facebook Fundraisers automatically end when your event has completed fundraising for the year.

Syncing

Online donations will always sync between your linked Facebook Fundraiser and your Bike MS Fundraising Center. If you make changes to your photo, story, goal, etc. on either your Bike MS fundraising page or your Facebook Fundraiser after the creation of your Facebook Fundraiser, the changes will not sync.

Donations

100% of all donations raised via Facebook Fundraiser go toward your event fundraising goal, supporting the National MS Society’s efforts to help those and their families touched by MS live their best lives.

Due to Facebook’s privacy policy, donors will show as “Facebook Fundraiser” on your Bike MS donor honor roll. To see who donated, you can click on the receipt button for each donation or download an Excel list of your donors.

You will also see who donated to you when you look at your fundraiser on Facebook. Some donations may be listed on your Facebook Fundraiser as private donations because the donor opted out of information sharing.

Facebook Fundraisers can only accept U.S donations. If someone would like to make an international donation, please refer them to your Bike MS fundraising page link.

Receipts and Refunds

Facebook will send a receipt to the email address associated with your donor’s Facebook account, which will include the National MS Society’s EIN/tax ID number. If your donor selects “Get emails from National Multiple Sclerosis Society,” while donating on Facebook, they will also receive a thank you email from the National MS Society confirming their gift.

To request a refund, please use Facebook’s donation support form.

Apps and Other Fundraising Tools

Facebook Fundraisers are not meant to replace other donation tools. We still encourage you to use your Bike MS Fundraising Center, email, our mobile apps, and more to meet and exceed your fundraising goal.

Facebook Fundraisers are separate from Bike MS’s own Social Sharing feature and Android/iOS apps. You can use our Social Sharing feature to share and schedule posts (to LinkedIn or Twitter) and thank donors on your favorite social media sites or to add an email signature badge to your emails.

Changes in Facebook’s privacy policies no longer allow 3rd party applications to automatically post upon a user’s behalf. However, similar to how you used to be able to schedule posts on Facebook, you can now schedule posts on Twitter and LinkedIn using the Social Sharing feature under the “Get Social” tab on your Bike MS Fundraising Center Dashboard.

Questions?

Contact our Fundraising Support team at 855-372-1331 or FundraisingSupport@nmss.org