Encouraging consumers to grow a mustache for the month of November is an idiosyncratic way to raise money and awareness of men’s health. But for the not-for-profit advocacy group Movember the campaign has worked. The group last year had 1.1 million consumers grow a mustache during November and those efforts helped Movember raise $141.5 million last year.

A big part of that success was the organization’s integration with Facebook, says Adam Garone, Movember CEO and co-founder.

Movember encourages those growing a mustache, whom it calls Mo Bros and Mo Sistas, to chronicle their mustache-growing via photos and videos. And they do.

The average Mo Bros and Mo Sistas taking part in the Movember post 12 Movember-related posts on Facebook during November. The average Movember participant has 258 friends on Facebook. That means that a lot of consumers were exposed to a lot of Movember-related content.

The not-for-profit group also launched the Movember Leaderboard App, which gave participants a tool to track their fundraising efforts against others.

“Facebook enabled our community to easily share their Movember journey, raise awareness about the health issues men face and request donations,” Garone says.

Facebook drove more than 10 million visits to Movember.com during November, a 37% jump compared to the previous November. 30% of Movember.com’s traffic stemmed from Facebook.

The not-for-profit says that it raised $17.6 million via people clicking from Facebook and donating, a 26% increase from 2011. And the $27 average donation was 13% higher than a year earlier.

Favorite