AI and Social Media Platforms Can Disrupt Fundraising Efforts
If you have had any interaction with me at all, in person or through blogs and podcasts, then you're well aware that I am not Mr. Technology. I'm still the guy without a Facebook page, Instagram account, Twitter/X handle, or any other social media outreach besides a very basic LinkedIn page. In addition, while overseeing them, I'm not an enormous fan of special events. Put all that together, and you can find my rationale for the interest in the story regarding the United Way of Northern New York and its conundrum with a special event and its Facebook page.
As the story goes, as written about in the Nonprofit Times, The United Way of Northern New York was utilizing its Facebook page to communicate and do outreach for a special event in support of its activities. Facebook was a major part of that outreach. The event had the word “Race” in its title and it is believed that word caused Facebook's decision. They suspended the page and cut off the group's access to it.
And you can guess what happened next.
The United Way of Northern New York immediately contacted Facebook to seek a reversal. No response. They tried multiple methods of outreach to Facebook. Still, no response. And if I were to guess, no one at Facebook (Meta) actually made this decision. Artificial intelligence used to review billions of social interactions probably saw the word and created an automatic trigger to remove the page from its platform.
There is one small problem. It wasn't a good decision and it crippled the event.
There is an intersection between social media and fundraising. I don't believe we, as an industry, have figured out how to do it perfectly, and maybe not even all that well. But this is what can happen without a little more forethought on the nonprofit side. While the United Way of Northern New York did nothing wrong and is doing great things through philanthropy for its community, it's going to fall on nonprofits like them to be aware of these issues. Because we all know Facebook isn't going to change. Neither are the other social media giants.
This is a good lesson based on the challenges of the United Way of Northern New York. One hopefully we'll all learn from, and they can correct it to keep doing good work.
