Nonprofits say Facebook's donation tools let them reach big audiences with minimal effort, but give them “virtually useless” data on actual donors
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg : Tweets: @kurtwagner8 , @db , @myurow , and @tszzl Tweets: Kurt Wagner / @kurtwagner8 : knew nothing about Facebook's “donate” button & fundraising features, so I spoke with almost a dozen nonprofits & found something interesting: While most people are upset FB keeps giving away user data, nonprofits are peeved FB *won't* give them user data https://www.bloomberg.com/... @db : “Email addresses, phone numbers, and physical mailing addresses... and almost none of that gold is available through Facebook's donation system.” There should be an opt-in to pass along more info. But if it did then nonprofits wouldn't need FB. So there's that. https://twitter.com/... Mat Yurow / @myurow : Something I've always wondered: Facebook stores your payment info if you make a donation. Are they allowed to use that card on file for non-donation purchases in the future (say buying a product on IG or a subscription TBA)? https://www.bloomberg.com/... Roon / @tszzl : Facebook shares data: people get mad Facebook doesn't share data: people get mad https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Kurt Wagner's Bloomberg reporting lands in an odd spot in Facebook's data wars: while regulators and users press the company to hand over less data, a dozen nonprofits say the real grievance is the opposite — Facebook keeps it all. The donate button delivers reach with minimal effort, but email addresses, phone numbers, and mailing addresses stay inside the wall, leaving charities unable to build their own donor relationships.
The complaint fits a pattern the related coverage already sketches: a [[a:973163|voter turnout group later saw conversion ads to iOS users collapse after Apple's ATT change]], and Privacy International found [[a:950905|Facebook's Download Your Information tool returns an incomplete list of advertisers who uploaded user data]]. In each case, the party funding or relying on Facebook's distribution cannot see the underlying data flows.
First-order effects
- Nonprofits using Facebook's donation tools get audience scale but no usable donor records, so every dollar raised leaves them with no way to re-solicit, thank, or steward those donors off-platform.
- Fundraising strategy shifts toward whatever Facebook optimizes for reach, since the platform — not the charity — owns the relationship with the giver.
Second-order effects
- Charities face pressure to split budgets between free-reach-but-no-data tools like Facebook's donate button and lower-audience channels where they keep contact details, forcing a trade-off between scale and retention.
- Other fundraising platforms and payment processors gain a selling point against Facebook: full donor data as the default, directly attacking the gap Wagner's sources describe.
Third-order effects
- If platform-owned donation rails become the norm, the nonprofit sector's donor files migrate from charities to social platforms, concentrating relationship data — and leverage over the sector's funding base — in a handful of companies already under scrutiny for how they handle user information.
The trend: Social platforms are absorbing entire transaction categories — donations included — while keeping the underlying customer data, turning even mission-driven organizations into dependent distribution customers.