Facebook Makes it Easier for Users to Offer Matches for Fundraising Efforts

Facebook announced today a new feature that will make it easier for users to match funds they raise for charity on the site.

“When you start a fundraiser, you have an opportunity to create a match right upfront. You can decide what the right match amount is, and then once you actually pledge dollars, that shows up in a number of different areas,” said Asha Sharma, who leads the social-good team at Facebook.

Users will be able to immediately see that the creator of the fundraising effort is matching dollars donated. That will show up on the event page and in the news feed, among other places, she said. Facebook created the match feature because it received requests to do so, and evidence shows it spurs giving on the site, Sharma said. Users were already donating to their own fundraising efforts, she noted.

“Now it is even easier for you to pledge that amount and have that be very clear that people can double their impact when they are donating to your causes and your campaign,” she said.

She cited one example in which a Facebook user in Brooklyn named David, whose sister had been killed in a traffic accident, set out to raise $100 for Mothers Against Drunk Driving on his birthday. In the text explaining his cause, he promised to match the donations. He raised 10 times his goal, Sharma said.

Growing Fundraising Presence

The company, currently valued at $508 billion, has made public only snippets of data on the volume of charitable dollars passing through its payment system. This week, Sharma said 1.5 million nonprofits have used Facebook fundraising pages, and the site has processed donations for 750,000 groups. She did not answer specific questions about how many total charitable dollars Facebook has processed or how many fundraising efforts have been created on the site.

What numbers have been made public show that the company is now processing at least tens of millions of charitable dollars annually. On Giving Tuesday 2017, Facebook handled more than $45 million in gifts, the company said, up from $6.79 million in 2016. And donors gave $20 million through the site in the wake of deadly Hurricane Harvey, which ravaged Houston and other Gulf Coast communities.

In November, the company eliminated its 5 percent transaction fee for dollars donated to charity. Facebook said Friday it is also waiving its 5 percent transaction fee for donations on the site that are made for personal needs, such as paying for health insurance.

The company also said it has added several categories — including volunteering and family — to those personal needs for which Facebook users can raise money.