The Hidden Marketing Gap: How Our Co-Sponsorship Unlocks Zero-Cost Facebook Ads for UK Charities

TL;DR? We’re Piloting A Unique New Service To Help Charities Grow Without More Marketing Expenditure

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Putting on a fundraising challenge event that you need to promote in order to get enough participants? Or looking to raise awareness of how people can support you with a gift in their will? Whatever your fundraising campaigns and goals, we’ve devised a brand new way to help promote them with paid social ads but where it costs you nothing.

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• You hire us to promote your fundraising campaign on Facebook and Instagram

• We determine how much it will cost to achieve your specific advertising goals

• Once we have a solid cost estimate, we find a suitable and appropriate commercial partner to fund the ad campaign in return for their brand featuring in all ads, on associated landing pages, and in any emails

• The partner business meets the campaign costs with a one-off Restricted Funds donation 

• You agree to commit 50% of the donation to ad spend with Meta and 50% to our creative and campaign management fees

• 100% of the money you raise can go straight to where it’s needed rather than a proportion having to be spent on promotional marketing

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The Problems We’re Solving With Funded Ads For UK Charities

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There are several core challenges that our unique scheme is designed to address.

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The need for paid social media: Organic social media reach has dwindled considerably on Facebook and Instagram, to the point where less than 10% of your fans and followers will see your posts. The only way to overcome this is to pay to run ads on these platforms in order to promote your fundraising campaigns to bigger audiences.

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It’s easy to end up with no net income: We frequently encounter charities that have used Facebook and Instagram ads to promote their fundraisers, only to then find that the donations generated only cover the advertising costs of acquiring them. In some instances, we’ve even seen ad spend exceed donations. These issues can be avoided with well designed and managed campaigns, but every pound spent on promotional ads is still a pound that can’t be used to deliver support on the front line.

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Donors aren’t keen on their money being used for marketing: Research by the Charity Commission for England and Wales (CCEW) finds that when charities can show most donations reach the end cause and beneficiaries, and that they are creating positive results, both trust and self-reported likelihood to donate increase. It also notes that the public recognise that not all support makes it to the front line, but that they want to know that the amounts being spent on costs like marketing are appropriate and not ‘wasteful’. 

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Grant funding bodies don’t make it easy: The big grant funders insist that charities show how they’ll diversify their funding so they don’t become dependent on any monies they might receive, but simultaneously prevent them from using any of their grants for the promotional marketing needed to attract new donors. You may have experienced this for yourself: you apply for major grant funding, securing vital capital from institutional trusts, foundations, or national lotteries. But flip to the terms and conditions, and the restriction is always the same: 100% of funds must go directly to frontline service delivery. Zero budget is allocated for promotional marketing, digital acquisition, or brand building creating. It creates a frustrating catch-22: without marketing, your reach stagnates, your supporter base ages, and your reliance on restricted grants deepens.

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Corporate partnerships are often badly constructed by charities: Too often, when seeking funding support from businesses, charities put their own needs first without properly considering what their business partners need from the arrangement. This tends to result in businesses becoming disillusioned and eventually discontinuing their support because businesses hate sending £1,000 or £5,000 into a general administration pot where they never see a tangible return or clear proof of impact. They want to do good, but they also need to justify the spend to their leadership by demonstrating brand alignment, local reach, and positive audience perception. When you offer a business a generic sponsorship package, you are asking for charity, but when you offer them a co-branded, performance-tracked Facebook ad campaign, you are offering a high-value strategic partnership.

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Our new approach brings together all the elements needed to overcome these challenges.

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What Is The Fifty2M Funded Ads For UK Charities Scheme? 

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Given the challenges charities face when it comes to fundraising, we’ve devised a wholly new and unique proposition. 

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We think you’ll agree it’s an elegant solution:

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Secure marketing expertise: We build and manage Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns to promote your fundraiser or your latest awareness drive, using our proven expertise to deliver exceptional results. 

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Pay nothing for it: Instead of our fees and the necessary ad spend being met by you, we find a suitable and appropriate commercial partner - with aligned values and interests in the same audiences - to fund the campaign costs in return for their brand featuring in ads, on websites, and in associated emails.

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For illustrative purposes, picture this:

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A charity that supports the homeless population in a small city wants to run a fundraising campaign and hires us to promote it with Facebook and Instagram ads. 

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We bring in a local estate agent that agrees to meet the costs of the campaign provided that all ads and associated marketing collateral are co-branded.

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Why an estate agent? 

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Firstly, estate agents work with those fortunate enough to benefit from home ownership, and the right one will see that there is something innately good about supporting a charity that works with those who are not able to purchase a home of their own.

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Secondly, the co-branded ads will be seen by audiences that matter to the estate agent, giving it a brand visibility boost. But because it’s now associated with a good cause, it will benefit from a sort of ‘halo effect’ that wouldn’t exist if it were to simply run ads of its own.

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And that’s it, in a nutshell: 

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• Charities hire us to run Facebook and Instagram ads to promote their fundraising campaigns and get results

• We find suitable commercial partners whose values and interests intersect with those of the charity and its cause

• The commercial partner agrees to cover the full costs of the Facebook and Instagram ads in return for exclusive co-branding rights on all associated marketing materials, and does so in the form of a Restricted Funds donation

• Charities taking advantage of this scheme agree up front that the donation we secure will be used solely for the stated purpose, spent exclusively with us, where half meets the costs of ad spend with Meta and half covers our creative and campaign management fees

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Who Are We Aiming It At? 

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Our scheme is designed primarily around two key audiences.

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Charities and other qualifying non-profits: If you’re a charity with annual income between £500,000 and £2.5 million, that’s registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales, OSCR in Scotland, or the Charity Commission of Northern Ireland, then our funded social media ads scheme is built for you specifically. However, it can also be enjoyed by Community Interest Companies (CICs) that are regulated by the Office of the Regulator of Community Interest Companies, and in good standing with the regulator, Companies House, and HMRC.

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Socially conscious, responsible, forward-thinking businesses: We’ve devised our scheme with Certified B Corps and other responsible ‘corporate citizens’ in mind - businesses that care about the people and places affected by their work, and society more generally, and want a way to demonstrate their commitment to doing well whilst also doing good, but that also value tangible commercial outcomes when donating to charity. If this sounds like your business, you should definitely explore the opportunities our scheme affords you. If your business competes in public and private sector tender processes that demand evidence of social value creation, our scheme can be used to support this too.

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The Charity and Brand Partner Benefits Of Our Funded Ads For Charities Approach

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• Participating UK charities will be able to access our proven talent when it comes to delivering exceptional results with ads on Facebook and Instagram, but with zero costs so that every fundraising campaign is guaranteed to be net income positive. 

• Charities that take advantage of this scheme will be able to clearly and transparently demonstrate to donors that every pound raised is available for use where it’s needed, not spent on marketing.

• The approach also makes it easier to demonstrate the income diversity demanded by grant funders.

• Businesses that take advantage of it also reap significant benefits. Cause Based Marketing (CBM) is very powerful these days as more and more consumers choose to buy from businesses that have a purpose beyond profit and deliver societal good. Being seen to visibly support a charity and its cause by paying for the ad costs associated with a fundraising campaign is a very obvious and tangible way to highlight the CSR credentials of a business, but in a way that translates into hard commercial advantage.

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Key Takeaways: Funded Social Media Ads For Charities, Available Only From Fifty2M

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We’ve designed a brand new and totally unique way to help UK charities enjoy greater results with their fundraising campaigns but without increasing their marketing expenditure.

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Paid social media has become an essential component of success when it comes to promoting everything from regular giving, gifts in wills, one-off individual giving donations, and charity challenge events. But it’s easy to end up in a situation where the sum of donations only ever meets the advertising costs of securing them, leaving little or no surplus to fund charitable activities. Charities sometimes even have to dip into their reserves when this happens.

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Donors want their money to be used to make a difference, not to be spent on promotional marketing. Grant funders are similarly reticent about monies they make available being used for marketing, despite insisting that charities show how they’ll diversify their fundraising to avoid over-reliance on large grants.

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Charities often turn to the business community for additional funding support, but there’s a tendency to overlook the need for business partners to obtain a tangible benefit; businesses want to see their charitable contributions as an investment that generates a meaningful return, not just as a sunk cost.

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Our scheme allows charities to access our experienced and expert team when it comes to promoting fundraising campaigns with high-impact Facebook and Instagram ads, but where the full costs are met by commercial brands that we bring to the table - brands with aligned values and that have an interest in reaching and connecting with the same audiences.

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We do all the heavy lifting, starting with an outline campaign design that allows us to estimate the costs of Facebook and Instagram ads; finding, vetting, and negotiating with prospective brand partners; and then executing the fully fledged campaign with co-branded ads and assets.

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Click here to find out more and enquire.