Facebook Add Donate Button to Charity and Non-Profit Pages

BuzzHunt.co.uk

You all saw this one coming a mile off. Well I did, but I'm like smart or whatever. Facebook have been experimenting with different ways to help charities promote themselves. After the recent earthquakes in Nepal, they rolled out an extensive set of features making it easy to people to donate and encourage others to do the same (as well as mark themselves safe if they happened to be anywhere nearby). Social media promotion has played an instrumental role in almost every big charity movement in recent memory.

Perhaps buoyed by the budding success of shopping integration into the platform, Facebook have now created a standardised donation button which can be applied to any charity page. They did a similar thing in 2013 but it was only applicable to a small group of selected partners like the American Red Cross, Rainn and the WWF.

TechCrunch

This time around it's not exclusively aimed at charity pages though, the increased availability is also meant for non-profit pages looking to raise funding for less charitable, but often awesome projects. Essentially, it creates a direct link between Facebook and crowd-funding. Was this necessary? No, but Facebook is a colossal, monopolising amoeba, hell bent on absorbing every internet trend it can find. The boys in blue worked hard to get that 1-and-a-half billion strong user army and it's looking for any means possible to keep them from opening new browser tabs.

In this case though, the process has become a bit more indirect. You get a window explaining that Facebook neither endorses, nor is affiliated with the page in question, likely just in case the Klu Klux Klan stand trying to rake in funds for more sheets or better quality eye-holes or whatever it is they buy (don't think to hard about it, you'll make yourself sad). The payment page itself is also external, unlike with the buy button, at least for the time being.

I suppose, in some sense, it wouldn't reflect very well on Facebook if they included the payment window, since it could be seen as discouraging people from visiting the actual site they're donating to, which would turn the whole thing into a 'offer one hand, arm the other' type of situation. In any case, it will be massively useful for non-profits in the early stages of promotion, and it's good to see Facebook propping up the little guys, whatever the motivation might actually be.

Callum Davies

Callum is a film school graduate who is now making a name for himself as a journalist and content writer. His vices include flat whites and 90s hip-hop. Follow him @CallumAtSMF

Contact us on Twitter, on Facebook, or leave your comments below. To find out about social media training or management why not take a look at our website for more info http://socialmediacambridge.co.uk/.