Meta Ads for Charities

What Meta Ads can do for your charity

Most charities think of Meta Ads primarily as a fundraising tool. It’s that, but it’s also good for:

• Direct response fundraising – donation appeals, matched giving campaigns, regular giving acquisition
• Lead generation – capturing supporter details for email nurture, event sign-ups, volunteer recruitment
• Brand awareness – reaching cold audiences at scale with video or image campaigns
• Supporter engagement – keeping existing supporters informed and involved
• Proposition testing – finding out which messages resonate with which audiences before you commit to a bigger campaign
• Legacy and major donor pipeline – reaching older, higher-net-worth audiences through Facebook’s targeting

A well-structured Meta Ads programme usually combines several of these objectives, with different campaigns targeting different stages of the supporter journey.

What we do

Strategy and planning

• Audience research and segmentation – lookalike audiences, interest targeting, retargeting pools
• Campaign structure built around your fundraising calendar and objectives
• Creative briefing – working with your team or ours to develop ad content that performs
• Proposition testing to identify what messages work before you scale

Campaign management

We can run your Meta Ads campaigns as a one-off or on a long-term retainer basis. We cover:

• Full setup, launch, and day-to-day management of your campaigns
• Ongoing budget allocation across campaigns based on performance
• Testing of creative, copy, and audience targeting
• Conversion tracking setup via Meta Pixel and Events Manager
• Monthly reporting on reach, cost per acquisition, ROAS, and other metrics that matter to your team

Meta Ads for charities: what’s changed

Meta’s advertising platform has changed a lot in recent years, and some of those changes have hit the charity sector hard.

iOS14 and the tracking impact

Apple’s iOS14 update in 2021 limited the amount of data Meta can collect from users on Apple devices. This reduced the accuracy of conversion tracking and made audience targeting less precise. The impact has been most felt by charities running direct donation campaigns, where cost per acquisition increased and attribution became harder.

We’ve adapted our approach accordingly to make sure our clients’ campaigns are still running effectively.

Targeting restrictions for charities

Meta has restricted targeting options for ads related to certain sensitive categories, including health, politics, and social issues. This can affect charities whose work touches on these areas – for example, mental health organisations or those working on social justice campaigns.

We know how to navigate these restrictions, and we’re clear with clients upfront about what’s possible and what isn’t.

Why charity Meta Ads is different

Running Meta Ads for a charity isn’t the same as running ads for a commercial brand. The audiences are different, the creative requirements are different, and the ethical considerations are different.

You’re often trying to reach people who are personally affected by your cause – people with lived experience of the condition you work on, or who have a family member who does. That means you need to communicate sensitively.

We also know how charity fundraising works – the seasonality, the relationship between direct response and brand, the role of challenge and community events, the importance of regular giving versus one-off donations. That helps us shape how we run your campaigns.

Who we’ve worked with

“It felt like every time we were having any wobbles or any concerns, the Platypus team was there, reassuring us, keeping us on track. It’s not just their knowledge and experience, it was on a more personal level – we just loved working with them all.”

– Jade Deeley, Head of Individual Giving, Samaritans

Frequently asked questions

How much budget do we need to run Meta Ads effectively?
It depends on your objectives. From lead generation or proposition testing to donor acquisition at scale across multiple teams, we’ll give you an honest view of what you can achieve for your budget.

Can you run Meta Ads alongside our Google Ads campaigns?
Yes, and there are real advantages to coordinating both. Meta can build awareness and generate leads from cold audiences, while Google captures people who are already searching for you. We manage both for a number of clients and the two channels work better together than either does alone.

We’ve run Meta Ads before and not seen great results. Can you fix that?
Yes! We have seen campaigns that are too narrowly targeted, creative that doesn’t connect with the audience, tracking that isn’t set up correctly so you can’t see what’s working, and accounts that haven’t been properly restructured after the iOS14 changes. We can audit your account and tell you how we can improve things.

Can we advertise on Instagram as well as Facebook?
Yes – Meta Ads runs across both platforms, and even Threads too. We’ll look at where your audience is, combine with your objectives and allocate your budget accordingly.

How do you measure success on Meta Ads?
It depends on your campaign objectives. For direct response campaigns we might report on return on ad spend. For lead generation, we look at cost per lead. For awareness campaigns, we track reach. We agree the metrics that matter to your team before the campaign goes live.

Do you work on the creative as well as the media buying?
We can. We offer creative strategy and development – working with your team to brief, create, and test ad content. Or we can work with creative that you supply. Either way, we’ll tell you what works for charity audiences on Meta and what doesn’t.

Find out how we can help you

Tell us about your charity and what you want to achieve with Meta Ads. We’ll get back in touch to arrange a call.

Why work with us?

• We communicate openly – we’ll make sure that you know what’s happening with your campaign the whole time and why it’s happening.
• We’re experts in Meta Ad campaigns – we work on campaigns for charities like yours every day.
• You own your data – we always build ads in your account, so you can always see and own your own data.
• We tailor reports – our real time dashboards are tailored to you, giving you the key information you need to report back to your teams.
• We help you build for the future – we’ll supply you with all the data, reports and insights you need to make sure you can carry success into the future.
• We are a Meta Certified Company – we have attained official Meta Certified Company status for Media and Creative Strategy.