Using social media is a fantastic way to get the word out to your friends and family that you are raising money to help kids with cancer go to camp. We encourage you to use it as part of your plan to promote your personal fundraising page on the Road Race website. This guide will give you the information and tips to help you take your fundraising message to Facebook and beyond.
Link your social media accounts to your Road Race website profile:
Click here for a video on how to do this.
Share the link for your personal fundraising page on social media:
The recommended way to fundraise on Facebook or any social media site is to create a post/story/reel and share the link to your participant page on the Road Race website. That will direct all your donors to your personal fundraising page where they will make their donation through the Road Race website (and not within the social media site.) This method ensures that all your donors will be shown on your personal page, the donor wall, included as part of your leader board points and the Road Race overall fundraising total, and will be thanked for their gift by Camp Sunshine.
Easily share your participant page or content directly from the Road Race website:
Click the share button or social icons that you see all over the Road Race website. It will auto-create a post that you can share with one click directly to your social profile. When your friends click on that post, they will be directed back to your participant page on the Road Race website to donate or see the content you are sharing. The system will auto-select an image when generating the post from the Road Race website. If you want to choose the image for your post, you will have to create your own post on the social media site to share the link to your personal page.
A note about limitations to "Facebook Fundraisers":
Facebook and other social sites offer easy ways to donate to or create a fundraiser for charities entirely within their platform. But there are some limitations to using this method when raising money for the Road Race.
When you donate to a Facebook Fundraiser, the entire transaction happens within Facebook via your Facebook user account. This process makes it easy for your donor to make a gift without ever leaving Facebook or having to connect directly with a charity. But, there is no way for those donations made within Facebook to be directly linked to the Road Race website or your personal page.
If you choose to create a Facebook Fundraiser (and you want those gifts to show up on your participant page and the Road Race fundraising total) then you will need to treat the donations you receive as an offline donation.
Behind the scenes on Facebook Fundraiser donations:
Facebook receives and processes the donation entirely through their platform using PayPal. Facebook then sends the donor an email confirmation with the tax receipt to the email address on file for their Facebook account. Camp Sunshine is a Facebook registered charity that is eligible to receive these donations. Facebook then passes the donated amount (less their processing fees) on to the charity periodically as bulk deposits with minimal donor information. The donor has to opt-in to allow their name/email to be shared with the charity and people don't often click that box.
Camp Sunshine does not receive complete donor information along with the funds from Facebook that would allow us to enter all of these donations individually into our database and send an acknowledgement letter to these donors.
If you want your donors to be in the Camp Sunshine system, receive a thank you note from us, and have the option to receive our newsletter and other communications, their donation needs to be made through the Road Race website, by check or cash sent to Camp Sunshine, or via www.mycampsunshine.com.