How to (and why) setup a Facebook page for your school?

We recently interviewed a number of elementary schools who have an active Facebook presence about their experiences.

This is what we learnt:

Why your elementary school should have a Facebook page?

The best use of Facebook is develop an active (young) alumni program and to keep alumni engaged and informed about the school and about each other. It builds a stronger bond with the school, which will help with development/fundraising from this group later on. If nothing else, you know where to find your alumni as they move around!

A secondary goal for having a Facebook page is as a billboard to prospective families. Increasingly parents will expect there to be a Facebook presence and might go looking for the school there. If there is an official page, it could give a good flavor of what’s going on at the school.

It’s important to claim and manage your school’s Facebook Fan Page, if for no other reason that to avoid some random person from claiming the page. Several schools reported drawn out and painful hunts to track down and shut down unofficially managed pages not representing the school.

Facebook does NOT appear to be a logical channel for communications with existing families and students at this point. E-mail and the school website appear to be better for this.

What gets posted?

Most schools keep it simple. They post news about events at the school and (in the case of an alumni page) news about alumni (new jobs, in the news, babies, graduating from college etc.). Usually anybody can post but in reality it is often a centrally appointed school staffer or alumni volunteer doing most of the posts.

Facebook policy?

None of the schools interviewed had a formal policy with regard to their Facebook fan page. None have a written policy on what to post or what not. None had thus far gotten into any trouble with their Facebook news. One school had an informal policy to only post “happy news” to their alumni page (so no death announcements, etc.).

Recommendations?

Updating a Facebook page on a regular basis can be a lot of work, so it’s important to formally assign somebody to do this and make it part of their day job (or volunteer commitment).
One option is to find somebody in the development team with an affinity for Facebook. Another option could be a staffer from the marketing or tech department. It doesn’t really matter who it is, as long as there is a central person who will remember to post news and who others know to send news to. In the case of an alumni page a good option is also to ask for a volunteer from every outgoing class (or even past classes) to be responsible for:

• Posting news about that year/class
• Encouraging class mates to “like” the Fan page

Oh, and once you have your page up and alumni are signed up: don’t forget to add the donation button from Fundly.

Sign up for a free account or join us for one of our weekly product demonstrations on how Fundly can help your school fundraising campaign’s success.