The one positive takeaway from my experience is that they are very careful about making sure the funds are going where they’re supposed to. The problem is that they aren’t very responsive during this process, so if you’re a small organization without a dedicated IT department and tons of lawyers to sort everything out for you, it can take months to get through all the red tape. Like I said, they didn’t tell us that anything was wrong. They just waited for us to notice that we hadn’t gotten our funds yet and then still took weeks to respond. FB Support actually never replied to me at all; they’ve only been responding to our Treasurer.
I’m happy to tell you the name of the organization I run so that you don’t become another one of the stories without a source, I just don’t want to post it on a public forum. Feel free to message me privately if you want more information.
If you want to host a fundraiser, I recommend checking if your charity is registered on GoFundMe Charity (https://www.gofundme.com/start/charity-fundraising) and then hold the fundraiser there. I’ve had much better experiences with GoFundMe. They’ve even been hosting free webinars throughout the pandemic for non-profit organizations on how to run successful online events and fundraisers.
Oh, and Facebook doesn’t always notify us that someone held a fundraiser on our behalf. We have to go looking for that information. But when I do find out about one I try to post a thank you (from the charity’s FB account, not mine personally) so that the person knows we’re getting the funds and are grateful for the support.