A Click Too Far: Why Social Media Isn't That Great for Fundraising

You couldn't look anywhere on Facebook without seeing it: Friends, celebrities and complete strangers dumping buckets of ice water to raise awareness of ALS, a neurodegenerative illness also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

The 2014 Ice Bucket Challenge ended up raising more than $115 million for ALS research and reached an unprecedented bar for a charity social media campaign—unprecedented and inimitable.

This week, the Web phenomenon of #GivingTuesday has launched us into the fundraising peak of 2015 (aka the tail end of the tax year), and with it, you're bound to see some social media fundraising call-outs. But it turns out that while Facebook and other social media sites can be good at putting issues on your radar, they are pretty ineffective at getting people to click away and actually donate.