How to Set Up Your Nonprofit’s Facebook Page

We’ve gotten to a point where it’s essential for businesses and organizations to maintain a presence on social media. With billions of people around the world on Facebook alone, social media platforms have become the number one way that organizations can connect and interact with their audiences.

If you’re new to social media, getting started can be the most daunting part. That’s why we’ve put together a simple step-by-step guide on how to set up your nonprofit’s Facebook profile from scratch.

Step 1 – Setting up a Facebook Page as a nonprofit entity

1. Go to facebook.com/pages/create 
2. Fill up your organization’s name under the Page Name section
3. Select the most suitable category that resonates with your NPO. Type organization in the ‘Category’ placeholder to see the various options you can choose from. You can choose up to 3 categories.
4. Fill out the ‘Description’ section. This section has a character limit of 255 characters. Do your best to describe your nonprofit as concisely as possible.  
5. Click on ‘Create Page’
6. Now, you’ll be given the option to add a profile photo. We recommend using an image of your organization’s logo.
7. In addition to that, you can also add a cover photo (820 pixels wide by 312 pixels tall). This is a great place to add some imagery of your nonprofit’s impact, or to promote upcoming campaigns or events. 
8. Click ‘Save.’ 

At this point, a popup appears which allows you to connect your Facebook page to Whatsapp. Filling this section out with a phone number allows users to contact you via WhatsApp chat with a single click. Should this be a feature that you see as beneficial for your nonprofit, connect your mobile number and verify it with an OTP. If you need more time to decide on this, just hit ‘X’, you can come back to this later. 

Step 2 – Filling up the About section 

Below is the list of information you can provide for your page’s “About” section

1. Location
2. Business Hours
3. Website 
4. Phone number
5. Email address
6. Additional information

Most of these are optional, but we recommend filling out every field as accurately as possible. As a nonprofit, you should be accessible and transparent. If you wish to change the description you entered while creating the page, you can do so here under ‘More info’ -> ‘About’.

Step 3 – Uploading the first set of posts 

Once you are through with setting up your profile, a good action point would be to upload an initial set of posts that talks about the basics of your organization and what it does. This could include a hello note from the founder, an awareness video about your nonprofit, a carousel that highlights the causes your organization supports, a recent impact report, images from your last event, and anything else that you want your new followers to learn about your organization. This sets a baseline of content on your page and shows users that are coming to your new profile that you are active on the page and ready to engage with your followers. 

Step 4 – Getting people to like and follow your Facebook Page.

Now that your Facebook profile is set up and ready to go, it’s time to invite people to follow your page. There are a couple of ways to go about this:  

1. Announce to your existing audience that you’re on Facebook. If your nonprofit isn’t a new organization, it’s likely that you already have a supporter database. In your next communication with your supporters, be sure to inform them of your new Facebook page by providing a link to the page and asking them to follow. Make an announcement on your website as well, and make sure to add a Facebook icon to your website’s header or footer that links to your profile. 
2. Run Facebook ads. If you’re a brand new organization or want to reach people beyond your database, an effective way to reach new followers is to run Facebook ads. Facebook allows you to run ads with the specific objective of getting more ‘Page Likes.’ You can target users by geography, interest, and demographic. 
3. Invite people personally. Facebook allows you to manually invite people to follow your nonprofit’s page — this means sending invites to all your connections on your personal Facebook page to like your nonprofit’s page. Ask other members of your organization to do the same. 

Once your nonprofit’s Facebook profile is all set up, you must stay active with posting content and engaging with your followers in order to continue to gain an audience. Check out our posts 5 Easy Ways to Improve Nonprofit Engagement and Building an Awesome Social Media Strategy for Your Nonprofit for ideas and tips for maintaining strong social media channels.