How WWF are using Instagram donate to engage younger donors

Instagram have launched their donation sticker in Europe and WWF-UK are one of the lucky 12 charities chosen as a launch partner!

Our Instagram channel has grown from strength to strength and we’re currently one of the most followed UK charity Instagram accounts. It’s also one of my team’s favourite channels to run — a defining reason for this is just how easy Instagram makes it to interact with our audience through stories.

The Instagram donate sticker is yet another feature enabling us to get closer to our audience, understand what motivates them to support us, and help them join the #FightForYourWorld!

What is Instagram donate?

Instagram is introducing a donation sticker in Stories that allows people to raise money for a non-profit they care about directly on Instagram.

And why use it?

Instagram donate is designed to help attract new younger donors.

It’s widely known that younger generations on average give lower donations than the older generations. Our own research at WWF-UK has also shown that the younger demographic are more likely to give one-off donations than sign up for a monthly direct debit.

Facebook’s own research has also shown that two thirds of Gen Z were inspired to donate to a charity by a message or image they saw on social media. But while young people may want to donate, reaching them through traditional platforms doesn’t always work.

That’s where new tactics on platforms they know and love come in!

WWF-UK’s first Instagram donate story

Our first story featuring Instagram donate is live and you can see it here on our highlights. But in case you’re not on Instagram, here’s a little taste…

As well as explaining to our audience how they can access the new sticker, we also encouraged them to either DM us or screenshot their own certificate which they can share on their stories after their donation sticker has ended:

It also provides a nice piece of content for my team to go back to people in direct messages when we’re notified of them setting up a donation sticker.

And we’re so excited to share our ‘bingo’ image too for our audience to love and use!

Your questions answered

As well as excitement, we also had a few questions to Facebook about the new Instagram donate sticker:

• How do we connect Instagram donate to our Instagram profile? If you’re already using Facebook fundraisers, the ability to use Instagram donate when it is rolled out will be automatic as long as your Instagram profile is connected to your business account.
• How long do the donation stickers stay live for? As with all stories, stickers are live for 24 hours unless added to a highlight. Highlights will enable the sticker to stay live until it’s removed.
• When will we know if someone has used an Instagram donation sticker to support our charity? You’ll be notified via DM each time! This makes it a lot easier and more timely than Facebook fundraisers, where the current process to check if new fundraisers have been set up is very manual.
• How do we know how much we’ve raised? Your transaction report for Facebook fundraisers will have an additional column showing which donations came from Instagram.

Best practice tips for Instagram donate

When you use Instagram donate, take advantage of these best practice tips from Facebook on how to craft your story:

• Educate: Let your followers know that they can now donate to your cause through Stories or using the donate sticker to raise money themselves
• Frame it: Kick start your donation story with photos and video of what your cause it and why it matters
• Define impact: Tell the story of what the donations will help accomplish
• Get creative: Use a photo and creative tools, like emoji and gradient text with the donation sticker, to illustrate the purpose of your cause
• Highlight: Use the highlight feature so supporters have access to your donation story for more than 24 hours.
• Repetition: Post the donate sticker in multiple stories for maximum exposure
• Use video: Your supporters are craving video content from you! Instagram users consumer 80% more video year after year, and 98% of all mobile video is view vertically.

I hope you’ve found my first blog useful! Follow me to keep updates on what we learn from using the Instagram donate sticker.