Let's Talk About Facebook and Ebola

Well, we're officially in the holiday season now, and the donation requests and social-media campaigns are in full swing. As a nonprofit fundraiser, I love this time of year. It's great to see all the great work being done around the world by so many amazing organizations to support some incredible missions.

With that said, I have been struggling with something for the last few weeks. And, as usual, I'm sure I'll get some grumbles with this post. But I'm just not sure how I feel about Facebook and the Ebola campaign it launched. I saw the post at the top of my Facebook feed in early November: "Angie, You Can Help Stop Ebola. Donate to organizations working in West Africa so they can save lives and stop the outbreak."

And, yes, I actually clicked to "learn more." And, yes, I've done as much research as possible to understand the strategy deployed by Facebook.

As you all know, Facebook chose to promote this donation request to all 1.3 billion Facebook users, and it also chose to promote donations to only three organizations. I'm not saying that International Medical Corps, American Red Cross and Save the Children are not wonderful organizations — but they certainly are not the only organizations fighting the Ebola crisis. I did some simple Googling and found some fantastic organizations that are working hard every day — on the ground, in the labs, in the hospitals, etc.

Granted, we know the power of social media, and I think having Facebook as one of the primary tools for raising awareness and funds is a gift to all nonprofits. All we have to do is be reminded that, according to Kristi Koon, director of direct-response marketing at the ALS Association (who spoke during a recent FundRaising Success webinar on the peer-to-peer aspect of the Ice Bucket Challenge), 440 million Facebook users uploaded their challenge videos.