What to Do About Facebook? Nonprofits Weigh Benefits Against Ethical Concerns

In early October, officials at the Latino civil-rights advocacy group UnidosUS announced they would sever ties with Facebook.

This meant that the organization, formerly known as the National Council of La Raza, returned or refused $277,272 in grants from the social-media behemoth’s corporate office. UnidosUS was already aware of the harms Latinos face as a result of the platform’s policies and products, says Claudia Ruiz, a civil-rights analyst at the nonprofit, but the revelations from Frances Haugen, the former Facebook employee-turned-whistleblower, were the “line in the sand.”

Haugen’s testimony and reporting in the Wall Street Journal’s “Facebook Files” series detailed repeated incidents in which the company’s researchers and leaders identified the platform’s ill effects — such as Instagram’s negative impact on teen mental health and a Facebook algorithm change that elevated divisive and false content — but didn’t take meaningful steps to fix them.

“It really underscored the level of impunity with which the platform and, frankly, its leadership is willing to go in terms of prioritizing growth and their bottom line over the well-being, safety, and health of its users,” Ruiz says. The issue of Spanish language misinformation and disinformation is a particular concern for UnidosUS, she says. The advocacy group plans to continue to push the company — and lawmakers — to take Spanish-language content moderation and enforcement seriously.

Facebook’s bad press this fall means mission-oriented organizations are once again weighing ethical concerns with the practical need to engage their audiences on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, which are both owned by the parent company recently rebranded as Meta.

With its unparalleled reach of more than 2.89 billion active users, Facebook remains the most popular social-media platform for nonprofits. Some groups bring in a lot of money on the platform, while others say the company’s products are vital tools to reach and organize supporters. The latest scandal hasn’t led charities to leave all that behind.

UnidosUS, for example, isn’t pulling back from Meta’s platforms entirely. After all, it still wants to be able to reach people where they are.

The organization wants to take on the proliferation of misinformation and hate on the platform, and officials recognize that Facebook is where a lot of people get their news, Ruiz says. “We really can’t address the onslaught of misinformation without also providing positive and accurate information as well.”

Pay to Play

If history is any indication, it’s unlikely the latest revelations will lead many nonprofits to leave Meta’s platforms entirely.

When news broke in 2018 that Facebook had allowed data firm Cambridge Analytica to improperly access personal information, nonprofits remained on the platform despite ethical concerns. Neither was there a big exodus later that year when the platform faced a massive security breach.

Ethical concerns — both recently and in past years — led to largely symbolic gestures, like temporary boycotts. Some organizations advocate for more regulation of social-media companies and for the companies to do better by the people they serve. When groups do make changes, like reducing their ad spending, for example, those decisions tend to be driven by practical concerns.

One exception: NTEN, a network of nonprofit technology professionals, logged off for good in June 2020, announcing it would pull its ads from Facebook and Instagram and stop posting on both sites.

“This is, admittedly, symbolic,” CEO Amy Sample Ward wrote in her note to the network. “I doubt Facebook noticed when our tiny ad budget was pulled. It also doesn’t cost us anything. NTEN can not only survive but continue to grow without Facebook’s assistance. That’s an organizational privilege I know not every organization shares.”

Charities have to weigh using a vendor that “has contributed to making the country worse” against what it would mean to abandon the platform and not reach the new audiences and supporters they otherwise would, says Matt Derby, senior vice president at M+R, a nonprofit marketing and communications consultancy.

Facebook has excelled at helping nonprofits find people with shared interests or who look similar to a charity’s current donor base. The platform, he says, “has become a very significant source not only of revenue but, in particular, new donors.”

Donors have given $6 billion to charitable and personal causes through Facebook and Instagram since the company launched its fundraising tool in 2016, according to Meta. That growth has been exponential — $1 billion of that money has come in since March.

But there’s not much nonprofits can do to influence whether the money they raise through Facebook‘s fundraising tools goes up or down. Charities receive little, if any, information about people who give or who click advertisements on Facebook or Instagram.

“I don’t think anybody would turn down the revenue,” Derby says. “However, it’s not really sustainable because you can’t follow up with those donors.”

Many groups have also seen organic engagement decline as Facebook’s algorithm has prioritized paid content. Conversations about Facebook tend to focus on making use of its advertising tools, Derby says.

His firm’s 2021 benchmarks report found that large organizations have spent a median of 40 percent of their fundraising ad budgets on social media, while small groups have spent a median of 73 percent.

Some organizations Derby and his colleagues work with have talked about reducing their ad spending. “In some cases, it’s simply not wanting to be so dependent on a single platform,” he says. “The ethical concerns certainly bring that to a forefront.”

In July 2020, civil-rights groups, including the NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League, organized a Facebook ad boycott called #StopHateForProfit. More than 1,000 companies and some nonprofits, including the Truth Initiative and the Southern Poverty Law Center, joined the effort while others reduced their ad spending.

Color of Change, which for years has called on Facebook to make its platform safer for Black users, helped organize the campaign. But the nation’s largest online racial-justice group didn’t pause its own ads.

“Unfortunately, we have been forced to rely on paid ads because Facebook has gone out of their way to limit our ability to organically reach audiences, even to reach Color of Change members,” the group wrote in a post on its website. “Facebook likes to talk about democracy and free expression, but without paying to reach audiences on the platform, our campaigns for justice for Black people would get drowned out by paid corporate advertisements.”

Caught in the Fray

Another problem nonprofits have had on Facebook: getting caught in the fray when the social-media network banned political and social-issue advertisements leading up to the 2020 election — a measure intended to stop the spread of misinformation.

That was the case for the Youth Leadership Institute, which helps people in their teens and early 20s become leaders in their communities.

After Facebook put the policy in place, the organization struggled to get sponsored posts in front of the people it was trying to reach, says Tim Haydock, chief development and communications officer. Any civic activity was flagged — even recruiting for a nonpartisan youth program, he says. “It happened a few times in a row, which throttled our ability to recruit via Facebook during Covid.” The company lifted the ad ban in March.

Facebook is still important for Youth Leadership Institute’s external messaging — a lot of the nonprofit’s community partners are there — but the platform hasn’t been especially effective as a fundraising tool, Haydock says. It brings in some money on Facebook, he says, but it’s not a high-value place for fundraising.

“It is not useful for me to keep building out this budget for Facebook ads if they’re not reaching the people we want,” Haydock says. It’s not that the organization no longer wants access to its audiences, he says. “What we want is a platform that actually works for us.”

Youth Leadership Institute was one of nearly 50 mostly progressive groups to sign on to a Facebook log-out campaign during four days in November. It joined groups like Naral Pro-Choice and MoveOn to encourage their networks to boycott Facebook and Instagram. The campaign called for Mark Zuckerberg to step down, the company to be more transparent about content-moderation decisions, and more.

Meta’s leaders understand they face a “trust deficit” and have a lot of work to do to build back trust, says Marcy Scott Lynn, the company’s director of social impact partnerships. “We understand that that trust deficit can exist even as people and organizations recognize the deep value they get from our products and the work that we do.”

Lynn echoed CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s comments that the company is serious about preventing abuse on its platforms — so much so that it will impact the company’s profitability.

The company is “committed to diving deep on these problems, really trying to invest in solving them,” Lynn says, adding that she hopes nonprofits will “continue to see us address these challenges in ways that have meaningful impact.”

‘Where People Are’

Nonprofits that use social platforms like Facebook and Instagram to build community but that don’t rely on them are the ones that are going to succeed, says Julia Campbell, a social-media consultant who works with nonprofits.

“We don’t have to embrace it, but we certainly can’t ignore it,” she says.

Some of her clients are organizations that focus on rare diseases, whose members use private Facebook groups to talk to each other, ask questions, make referrals, and provide other support to each other. “For some nonprofits, it really is a lifeline that the good outweighs the bad for them,” she says. “These platforms are integral to our work, and they’re integral to the daily life of the people we serve and our donors. We really can’t avoid it.”

Connie Sobczak, co-founder and executive director of the Body Positive, an educational nonprofit that teaches people to live in peace and good health, says the whistleblower revelations this fall show the need for her group’s work more than ever.

The Berkeley, Calif., group teaches teenagers about “intuitive eating” and to be aware of how they feel when they use social media, giving them advice for following people or accounts that make them feel good.

“Our work is to provide them with tools and ways of looking at the world that allow them to be resilient and allow them to create communities that support them in being able to handle all of the horrible crap that comes at them from everywhere,” Sobczak says.

The group has an Instagram following of more than 40,000. “I believe we are one of the accounts that is helping,” she says.

Right now, nonprofits are weighing ethical concerns about Facebook and Instagram, but the conversations are unlikely to stop there.

Organizations need to develop their own criteria for which vendors they will work with and which they decide not to, says Derby, the consultant with M+R.

“Facebook is where people are, as are places like YouTube and Amazon,” he says. “This will probably come up again, right? I think there are equally questions about if you should advertise on TikTok or any of the Google properties.”