Facebook’s birthday fundraising tool has now raised over $300 million

Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.

Facebook’s birthday fundraising tool has generated $300 million in donations since it launched a year ago. The feature allows you to create a donation drive online for an organization on your birthday.

Among the non-profit organizations benefiting the most from birthday fundraisers are St. Jude, Alzheimer’s Association, the American Cancer Society, Share Our Strength – No Kid Hungry, and the ASPCA. In total, 750,000 non-profits now have access to Facebook’s fundraising tools.

As the birthday funding tool begins its second year, Facebook is adding new features, including the ability to match donations and add organizers to your fundraisers. Additionally, Pages, including those run by brands, public figures, and nonprofits themselves, can now create and donate to fundraisers. People can also make recurring monthly donations to the organizations and causes that are important to them.

In announcing the one-year milestone, Facebook highlighted some of its birthday fundraisers. These include:

• Yuriko Shotter, who raised $7,201 on her birthday for 13th Street Cat Rescue to help the cat shelter in her local community build a warmer shelter for cats.
• Valentine Toohey Smith, who raised $1,914 on her daughter’s 12th birthday for charity: water, an organization whose mission is to bring clean water to people all over the world.
• Aldo Billingslea, who dedicated his birthday to the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre in San Francisco and raised $7,066 to support local theater and the arts in his community.
• NBA star Stephen Curry, who celebrated his 30th birthday by raising $82,512 for Nothing But Nets to help combat childhood malaria.
• And Madonna, who recently launched a fundraiser for her 60th birthday, benefitting Raising Malawi’s work at the Home of Hope orphanage located in a rural, high-need area of Malawi.

Facebook’s funding tool is a terrific idea and one that’s easy to set up. You can learn more at this link.

Have you ever used the Facebook birthday fundraising tool? What’s your project’s link?

In other tech news:

• Facebook introduces AR games to Messenger that you’ll probably never play
• Facebook wants to know your financial information so it can share it with you on Messenger
• Facebook is pretending to care about our screen time by adding new activity trackers

Bryan M. Wolfe

Bryan considers himself a well-rounded techie, having written articles for MakeUseOf, KnowTechie, AppAdvice, iDownload Blog. When he's not writing, he's being a single dad and rooting for his alma mater, Penn State, or cheering on the Patriots.