Facebook is adding a GoFundMe clone to expand its range of online fundraising tools, introducing support for personal fundraisers.
With personal fundraisers, Facebook wants to allow users to raise money for the causes that matter most to them, whether they need funds for themselves, a friend, a charity, or something else. Here's how it works.
Facebook Personal Fundraisers
The new personal fundraising tools will enable Facebook users to raise funds for personal emergencies and various other situations such as crisis situations, funerals, medical expenses, school costs, and whatnot. Moreover, Facebook Pages can now add a "donate" button to their live broadcasts on the platform, thus increasing their potential to get help.
"When people mobilize around the causes they care about, it builds a safe and supportive community," says Facebook. "Our charitable giving tools have made it easy for people to raise millions of dollars for nonprofits to support those in need directly on Facebook. Today we are expanding those tools to include personal fundraisers, as well as more options for people to continue to fundraise for nonprofits."
For those unfamiliar with Facebook's activity on the fundraising scene, the company has made several efforts so far. Back in 2015, for instance, it launched a feature similar to Kickstarter, allowing nonprofits to set up campaign pages, state their goals, and raise money. The company expanded its fundraising tools last year to allow individual users to raise funds for nonprofit organizations.
Those efforts paved the way to the latest feature - personal fundraisers - to allow individual users to raise money for themselves or others even if the cause is not related to a nonprofit or charity.
These types of online campaigns have been gradually gaining ground and it makes sense for Facebook to expand such fundraising tools to a wider user base, but personal fundraising on Facebook is still very limited for now.
Facebook Personal Fundraising Limitations
For the time being, Facebook is only launching personal fundraisers in beta over the next few weeks. The tools will be available only in the United States and only for users aged 18 and older.
At the same time, the personal fundraisers have only six categories at first:
1. Education (which can cover tuition costs, costs related to books or classroom supplies, and so on)
2. Medical (expenses for various procedures, surgery, and treatments)
3. Pet medical (to cover expenses for veterinary procedures and treatment)
4. Crisis relief (in cases of a public crisis, natural disaster and such)
5. Personal emergency (such as a car accident, house fire, or loss of property due to theft)
6. Funeral and loss (can cover burial costs and living costs after losing a loved one)
Facebook aims to expand the list of available categories in time, as it manages to automate a larger part of its review process. For now, however, personal fundraisers will launch only for these six categories and the rest will likely depend on how the beta goes.
Facebook Personal Fundraiser: How It Works
Just like other fundraising tools, Facebook's personal fundraisers will be pretty straightforward and easy to use. Users visiting someone's personal fundraising campaign will have options to invite other friends, share the campaign, or click the blue "donate" button to give money right on the site.
