A 24-hour Facebook awareness campaign is when you ask all your friends to “donate” their Facebook status message for 24 hours to help spread awareness about your fundraiser. One of our users did this a little while back and raised over $1000 in a 24-hour period.

Here’s how you do it.

• Step one: Set up a Facebook group or event  (either one will work). You’ll want to set this group or event up 7-10 days before you plan on having the 24-hour campaign so as to give your friends enough time to know about it and invite others to join.

• Step two: Invite all your friends to the group or event, asking them to donate their Facebook status message for 24 hours.  For example, let’s say you are raising money for your friend Jim who is battling cancer.  You might want to write something like:

“As many of you know, our good friend Jim Smith was recently diagnosed with cancer, and we need YOUR help!  We have set up a fundraiser page on GiveForward.org to raise money to cover his medical bills.  On May 17 we are holding “HELP JIM DAY” on Facebook to raise money and awareness for Jim.  Starting at 1:00 PM on May 17 and lasting until 1:00 PM on May 18 we’re asking everyone to update their status message to ‘HELP JIM @ www.giveforward.org/JimSmith’.  IMPORTANT!! We need as many people updating their status message  as possible to make this work, so PLEASE invite your friends to join this group.  Even if your friends might not know Jim personally, please encourage them to ‘donate’ their status message for 24 hours.  Thanks in advance.  This will make a HUGE difference for Jim.”

• Step three:  In order to reach more people, ask five to ten of your friends to become administrators for the event/group.   As an administrator, each person would be responsible for inviting all his or her friends on Facebook.

• Step four:  Send out Facebook message reminders.  Lots of people ignore group and event invitations on Facebook, so in addition to the invitation that goes out from the group/event, you might want to send separate reminder messages to your friends either through regular Facebook messages or through email.  Make sure to send a final reminder the day before the event and ask all the administrators to do the same.

• Step five: The day BEFORE the actual event, set your status message to HELP JIM @ www.giveforward.org/JimSmith.  This will remind your friends to do it and get the ball rolling.

Important Note:  Timing!!!

It’s important to note that you should not hold your 24-hour Facebook campaign until you’ve first raised a decent amount of money from close friends and family.  The reason for this is simple:  people like to follow the herd.  In other words, people (especially people on Facebook) are way more likely to donate to a fundraiser that already has a lot of momentum than to a fundraiser that has no momentum.  So, if you start a 24-hour Facebook campaign too early when you haven’t raised any money yet, chances are most people on Facebook aren’t going to donate.  But, if you wait until you’ve raised a decent amount of money, (say a few thousand dollars) before you launch your 24-hour campaign, people on Facebook will view your campaign in a different light and will want to join “the herd” of people who have already donated.