Is it a war? It feels like a war. Is that a bit dramatic or paranoid? Maybe. Maybe not.
Not only do we have to do all of our work to help our causes (and that is a hard job in itself!), we have to constantly battle Big Tech for basic rights that most for-profits have.
Have you ever had to deal with a site's tech support? We all know that it's usually a special type of hell.
We gear up and enter that hell in order to be able to help other people. And we usually get spit out with no help.
Here is the story of what our charity goes through constantly:
Our charity has 7 NGO's. Social media and major sites have greatly harmed our ability to raise awareness and funds with their current set ups and rules. Let's discuss.
Only 1 of 7 of our charities can take donations on Facebook. It doesn't matter what governments or charity commissions deem us legal, Facebook outranks them. So our very critically ill children don't get donations. During a pandemic. No discussion is allowed. We had a couple of fake reviews on one of our charity pages that are clearly spam and very inappropriate for a children's charity page, but when we report it, nothing happens. They don't have to prove they are real. Amazon blocked us from selling awareness items because our "account admin can't be proven real". I've done everything but give blood. Driver's license, passport, security clearance, photos, letterhead. If my library card hadn't expired, I'd give them that too. Ebay has blocked our UK charity for "security reasons". No discussion allowed. Facebook has rejected our shops. So we can't sell awareness items through Facebook anymore. Unless we delete our current shop and only sell through them, adding over 1000 items by hand again. Or we could buy ads to our regular shop. But for-profit companies that steal graphics we (I personally) created to raise awareness and funds for the cause continue to sell items, despite our reporting them for stealing. Our biggest Facebook page has 32,000 page fans. On our best day now, only 150 people see a post unless we pay for ads. As a charity. Giving Tuesday is a week away and 6 of our 7 charities cannot take donations on Facebook. We could post about Giving Tuesday and ask for donations but less than 1% of our followers (people who "liked" our page and want to see our posts) will see anything we post. Black Friday and Cyber Monday could help us sell awareness items. But Ebay, Facebook and Amazon won't allow that. Again, we are a children's charity trying to help critically babies. Not a for-profit. After years of back and forth, begging and pleading, no help lines or help lines asking us to take hours / days to jump through hoops that don't fix anything (and losing precious volunteer / staff hours).... we could take it personally. Some days, I do. Ok, most days, I do. It's like living in the movie "Gaslight" sitting on tech support. "Yes, we did what you asked". "No, you didn't do what we asked". "Yes, we did. We have proof we did". "We said you didn't so you didn't. Banned. You can't appeal our final decision". It's like an alternate universe. A crazy-making, painful, alternate universe. If the objective is to wear us down, it works. Now, let me say that several people at the charity have tried to work with Big Tech to resolve these issues. It's not a case of me not being able to follow directions or losing my temper. It's a case of... the system is stacked against charities. Blatantly. Especially small charities. And I do not do victim mentality nonsense. But here we are... years later without all these issues resolved despite doing everything except selling our souls.. and things still do not work. We are not the only ones. I see complaints, questions, tears at least weekly from fellow charity leaders about these issues. Why? Why does Big Tech do this to charities? Facebook matches $8m in donations for Giving Tuesday. The big, multi-million dollar charities swallow that in less than 2 minutes. Most smaller charities don’t bother asking their people to try for the matching donations because the odds are stacked far against them and it makes more sense to use that energy elsewhere. What Facebook could do to help charities more is to let our posts be seen without charging us for ads. Please. Or don't make us cry trying to get things to just work. Charities have lots of work to do to become charities and maintain our status. We have to make the IRS and our states happy. For us, we have to answer to 7 governments. So if governments say that a charity is a legal non-profit, why does Big Tech get to say we aren't? I'd really like to write an editorial about this. Can anyone recommend a paper? Meta eBay Amazon.com #charity #charities Facebook asked if we would like to donations on this post. YES, yes we would! Can we share this please? Where are all my journalist friends? And friends who do work for these Big Tech companies? Show them please. Because charities are the good in the world. We help the sick, homeless, hungry, abused, scared, lost. We put others before ourselves, profit and we are put under microscopes 100x more than any for-profit company. So why aren't charities helped instead of harmed? We can do better.
