New Facebook fundraising tools unveiled in run-up to Christmas
Howard Lake | 22 November 2019 | News
Facebook has extended its charity fundraising products ahead of Christmas, Giving Tuesday and year end campaigns.
It has added fundraiser stickers in Facebook Stories, extended charity livestreaming, and added an Instagram donate button on the profiles of business accounts. It has also hinted at a new tool coming next year that will enable people to donate their time as volunteers to charities.
The holiday season is all about giving back to the people and causes you care about. And this year, to help you give back in easy and impactful ways, we’re matching donations to nonprofits on GivingTuesday and launching new products to make giving back seamless on our apps.
Advertisement
New fundraising tools
1. Fundraiser Stickers in Facebook Stories
Following on from the introduction of fundraiser stickers on Instagram Stories this summer, you can now use a fundraiser sticker on Facebook Stories. The sticker on your story can be used to promote a specific charity or a personal fundraiser.
In the US the Latin GRAMMYs used this new feature to drive people to their fundraising campaign for the Latin GRAMMY Cultural Foundation.
The fundraising sticker appears as one of the options on the stickers menu on a Facebook Story:
2. Charity Livestreaming
Facebook is launching charity livestreaming tools to enable charities to benefit from those who take part in gaming for good. The tools are available to all Facebook Gaming Level Up creators and partnered creators in regions where fundraising tools are available on Facebook, including the UK.
During a livestream, gaming creators can now:
- select causes for viewers to support
- set donation goals
- add a donation progress bar
- and share donation alerts within a livestream video.
Gaming creators can choose from the full list of charities available for fundraisers in their given region and people can donate while watching a livestream.
The launch of the tools follows a year of testing with a small group of gaming creators in the US. During this period 25 gaming creators raised more than $180,000 for charity.
3. Instagram donate button on business account profiles
The new Donate button on Instagram gives another tool to fundraise on Instagram together with the Fundraiser Stickers on Instagram Stories introduced in the UK July.
Charities with business accounts can now raise money directly from their profiles, making it even easier for their communities to support them.
Facebook confirms that 100% of all donations it handles via its fundraising tools is passed to the relevant charities. The total for income raised by Facebook fundraising tools, much of it raised by Facebook birthday fundraisers, is over $2 billion.
Volunteering tool in the works
When announcing the new fundraising tools Facebook mentioned that it was also currently working with nonprofit organisations to build a feature on Facebook that will make it easier for people to donate not just money, but also volunteer to donate their time to causes they care about.
This feature is expected to launch in 2020.
$7m donation match for Giving Tuesday for US nonprofits
Finally, Facebook confirmed it is offering to match up to $7 million in donations to US nonprofits made through Facebook fundraising tools on GivingTuesday, 3 December.
To ensure an equitable distribution and help as many causes as possible, its match will have a per-nonprofit and per-donor cap.
- Over 7 million people in the UK have donated to a Facebook fundraiser (23 March 2021)
- Facebook fundraising results from Givepanel’s charity clients (15 April 2021)
- Donorfy adds facility for managing Facebook and Instgram fundraising (13 July 2020)
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.