Almost every support group ends up on Facebook, and almost none of them chose it. It was where the members already were, it took ten minutes, and there was no budget for anything else.
Then you notice the person who came to one meeting and never joined the group. Or the member who asked, quietly, whether anyone could tell she was in it. For most communities Facebook is a compromise. For a support group it is a barrier to the people who need you most.
The problem is identity, not privacy settings
A private Facebook group is genuinely private in the sense Facebook means: non-members cannot read the posts. That is not the thing people are worried about.
Membership is attached to a real name, a photo, and a social graph built from coworkers, relatives, and people from school. Even where the group is hidden, joining means creating a connection between your legal identity and a subject you may not have told anyone about. The setting is private. The account is not.
Four things this quietly costs your group
The people who never join
You never see this cost, which is what makes it dangerous. Someone reads about the group, realises joining means attaching their name to it, and closes the tab. They do not tell you, and you never know they were there.
Messages that do not arrive
Organic reach on Facebook averages around 1.65%. When the room changes or a session is cancelled, a post reaches a fraction of your members, and someone drives to an empty building on a hard day.
Advertising built on attention
The feed your members read is monetised. Whatever the targeting does or does not use, asking someone in grief or recovery to sit inside an advertising product is a poor setting for the conversation you are trying to hold.
A group you can lose overnight
There is no member list you can export and no relationship you own. If the group is restricted or removed, the whole thing is gone, with no appeal and no way to tell anyone where you went.
Get the Support Group Privacy Audit
Ten questions to check what your current setup actually exposes, and what a member has to give up in order to join. Free, takes ten minutes.
What to look for instead
The test is not whether a platform has privacy settings. It is what a member has to reveal in order to walk in the door.
- Joining does not attach participation to a public profile or a friends list
- Members cannot see each other’s contact details unless they choose to share them
- Every message reaches every member who opted in, with no algorithm in between
- No advertising anywhere near the group, and nothing in it used for targeting
- Your organisation owns the member data and can take it elsewhere
- A new person can find and join without making a public action
Moving a group without losing it
Do not announce a migration. Announce a home. Set up the new space, tell the group at a meeting where things are moving and why, and keep the Facebook group open in read-only mode for a month or two with a pinned post pointing at the new place.
Move the practical things first: the schedule, the room, the resources. Once those live somewhere else, attention follows without anyone having to be persuaded. And say the reason out loud, because the reason is the strongest argument you have. People joined a group about something difficult. Telling them you moved so that joining costs them less is a message they will understand immediately.
The measure of a support group platform is not how private the settings are. It is how much a person has to reveal to walk in.
Where Kannect fits
Members join your organisation directly on Kannect. There is no friends list, no public profile, and no social feed connecting your members to people outside the group. There is no advertising anywhere in the platform, and your organisation owns its member data.
Announcements reach every member who opted in through push notification and email, in the Kannect Community Hub app that already holds any other organisations they belong to. Plans start at $23 a month billed yearly, and nonprofit donations are processed at 0% platform fee.
Check what your setup actually exposes
Ten questions covering identity, reach, ownership, and what a member gives up to join. We’ll send it now.