Introducing Personal Fundraising: Facebook’s New Charity Feature

As the world’s most popular social media platform, Facebook knows it can exert some influence especially in doing some social good. The company is certainly up to the challenge, and is now debuting a new charity feature called Personal Fundraising. Basically, this new service allows Facebook users to raise funds for themselves, their family and friends, or any third party they think are worth supporting in terms of financial assistance. Some users may find this new tool from the social media giant a little bit reminiscent of GoFundMe, but in the case of Personal Fundraising, it tries to bring social causes to the user’s feed directly.

So how does one go about using the Personal Fundraising feature? Before any user starts raising some funds, he must make sure he is at least 19 years old, and the cause he is supporting must fit into any of the six specific categories outlined by Facebook. So which categories are we talking about? Here they are:

• Crisis Relief -- Fundraising for assistance during natural calamities, public crisis

• Education -- Raising funds to pay for tuition, school supplies, and other education related expenses

• Funeral and Loss -- Raising funds to cover for burial and other funeral expenses, living costs after the death of a family member or relative

• Medical -- Raising funds to pay for medical procedures, treatments, and the procurement of medicine

• Personal Emergency -- Fundraising for accidents, theft, or property damage

• Pet Medical -- Raising funds to pay veterinary needs, and treatments for pets

It should be noted that once a fundraiser is officially live, family, friends, and other donors can start sending their monetary support by way of a secure payment system integrated into Facebook’s main website or mobile app. On the donors’ side, they will be able to view who started each fundraiser, as well as the profiles of those who are also supporting the same cause.

Facebook reserves the right to have every proposed fundraiser undergo a 24 hour review process. Moreover, personal fundraising is not completely free of charge. The social media giant will be charging a 6.9 percent fee (plus $0.30) for every fundraiser. This charge will cover costs like vetting, payment processing fees, and fraud protection. 

The new Personal Fundraising feature will be deployed in beta mode in the next few weeks. The plan is to  have the service made available only to users in the United States initially, but if the beta goes well, there should be no reason not to have the feature rolled out globally.