I just had to sit down and untangle this Facebook “hairball” (one of many I might add) because, if it’s understood and used correctly, it can be great tool not only for you but for an organization that decides to support a cause.<\/p>\n
So… here goes… 5 minutes to becoming an expert at Facebook causes.<\/p>\n
First, a couple of facts.<\/p>\n
From the point of view of the organization looking to raise money through causes, the Facebook application called “Causes” organizes itself into a hierarchy.<\/p>\n
At the bottom of this hierarchy is the organization that receives the funds. They are called, in causes terms, the Beneficiary.<\/p>\n
A Beneficiary must be a 501(c)3, non-profit organization that is registered with Guidestar and, as part of it’s profile, have enabled “on-line donations”.<\/p>\n
This is required because a lot of the information that Causes obtains and passes on through Facebook is obtained from the Guidestar database.<\/p>\n
The next step up the foodchain is the cause.<\/p>\n
A cause can be created by anyone (including the owner of the Beneficiary). Causes are then “affiliated” or associated with a Beneficiary. This affiliation enables a Facebook user to join a cause or donate to a cause and enables the donations to flow through the cause to the Beneficiary.<\/p>\n
From a Beneficiary point of view, this scheme enables one or more causes to be associated with a single beneficiary. For example, if I am part of a non-profit beneficiary called “Save The Forests”, I (or any other Facebook user) can start a cause that benefits Save The Forests. I can can start a cause called “Plant A Tree” so others can donate to that cause (and benefit Save The Forests). Other Facebook users who are interested in what Save The Forests does can also start a cause. For example, Joe (who I may have never met) can start a cause called “1000 Trees” that also benefits Save The Forests. The “social idea” here is that if Joe believes in the cause that he created, so will his friends on Facebook.<\/p>\n
Creating causes in not some uncontrolled process. A key to the whole thing working is the concept of “affiliation”. In order for Joe’s cause to benefit my Beneficiary, Joe has to request that his cause become “affiliated” with my Beneficiary. If I approve the affiliation request, then all is well. If I don’t (perhaps because Joe’s cause doesn’t quite match my brand), I can reject the affiliation. This frees Joe to affiliate his cause with some other organization if he wants to.<\/p>\n
So… if you are a beneficiary, here are a couple of rules to follow when using Facebook..<\/p>\n
That’s it!<\/p>\n
Happy causing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I just had to sit down and untangle this Facebook “hairball” (one of many I might add) because, if it’s understood and used correctly, it can be great tool not only for you but for an organization that decides to support a cause. So… here goes… 5 minutes to becoming an expert at Facebook causes. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marketthinkonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marketthinkonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marketthinkonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marketthinkonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marketthinkonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.marketthinkonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227,"href":"https:\/\/www.marketthinkonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions\/227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marketthinkonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marketthinkonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marketthinkonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}