Facebook launches fundraiser feature for users’ birthdays

Birthdays on Facebook are about to get more meaningful.

What used to be an all-but-empty act of well-wishing can now become a reason to support a cause or nonprofit organization.

In a blog post, Facebook announced:

People often dedicate their birthday to support a cause, and we’ve seen people using Facebook to raise money for causes they care about. For those in the US, we’re now making it easier to do this by giving you the opportunity to create a fundraiser for your birthday directly on Facebook.

Two weeks before your birthday, you’ll see a message from Facebook in your News Feed giving you the option to create a fundraiser for your birthday. You can create a fundraiser for any of the 750,000 US nonprofits available for fundraising on Facebook. Your friends will receive a notification inviting them to support your cause in honor of your special day.

It’s a chance for users to feel like their birthday is having a positive impact on the world, while giving nonprofits the opportunity to collect more donations through the platform.

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The Next Web reported:

Asking someone to support a cause on your birthday is not a new practice, but integrating it directly into Facebook’s platform is a clever move. After all, everybody has a birthday, and raising money for a non-profit is something people might not have thought of without being prompted. It’s simple to set up and makes people feel good about themselves, so I can see many people making use of it.

Even if just a few friends donate, that’s still money coming into non-profits that might not have come otherwise. It’s the type of social media feature that could have a real, positive impact, for a change – and certainly more useful than random birthday messages.

Nonprofit communications pros: You should see this as an opportunity to let the people who follow you know that this feature exists (in the most tactful way possible).

Consider it an opportunity to expand your donor base, and include messages about the feature in your other (non-Facebook) communications.

What do you think about the new feature?

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