After receiving relentless criticisms that the fake news circulating around Facebook helped Donald Trump win the Elections 2016, the site has needed good news to boost its status.
The social media network introduced a donation feature on its Facebook Live videos. This update lets people host streaming videos to raise funds for non-profit organizations of their choice.
Enter Community Help, Facebook's new effort that was unveiled at their first ever "Social Good" event last Thursday. The feature could be fully launched early next year and should help users ask for donations or offer contributions following disasters.
Facebook is thinking contributions could be in terms of food, supplies and shelter. But what people could ask for or choose to give is entirely up to them.
"We're inspired by how much good comes from connecting on Facebook but we know we can do more," Facebook Social Good VP Naomi Gleit noted in a blog post.
Moving forward, the social media company would also allow users to decide when to turn the Safety Check function on or off. This is the company's existing feature letting users tell their loved ones that they are safe during or after disasters.
Facebook believes that the people closest to disasters should play bigger roles in deciding whether the Safety Check feature is most helpful. It usually comes up when many people post statuses about an incident that occurred within the affected area and would ask that specific individual whether they are safe or not. After answering, that person could also ask their friends to do the same.
To further promote and improve its donation Facebook Live feature, the company has partnered up with more than 750,000 organizations that could receive contributions from this new feature. Users wishing to fundraise via Live videos should link donations to any non-profit organization that includes small local orgs to big global ones.
In line with this, Facebook joined forces with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to celebrate the upcoming 5th anniversary of Giving Tuesday this November 29. Donations via Facebook Live for both institutions could be up to $1 million while individual fundraisers were limited to $1,000.
For this charitable event, Facebook also waived its standard processing fees, which is 5 percent per donation and is comparable to other donation platforms like Crowdrise and GoFundMe.
The event would be promoted at the very top of the newsfeeds for all United States users come November 29. This would be the first time a Facebook Live fundraising event would surface at the top of the newsfeed.
Users who opt to watch the live stream could contribute directly to existing fundraisers or create their own to celebrate Giving Tuesday.
