Facebook online fundraisers raked in $125 million for charities on Giving Tuesday. That’s nearly three times more than the $45 million that the social network helped people raise on the same day last year.
For donors, part of the lure was a huge matching program provided by both Facebook and PayPal. The companies agreed to mirror up to $7 million in contributions on a dollar-per-dollar, first-come, first served basis. The fine print: It was capped at $250,000 per nonprofit and $20,000 per donor.
If the incentive sounds like a Black Friday door buster, it disappeared just as fast. The funds became available at 8 a.m. Eastern time, and were gone within “a matter of seconds,” according to a Facebook spokesperson. At 9:05 Eastern, the company issued an update (“Wow, that was fast!…”) confirming the deal was over.
The same sort of thing happened last year. As The NonProfit Times reports: “Facebook matched $2 million in gifts with the help of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which reached its limit by 8:30 a.m. on #GivingTuesday.”
Facebook made the service free for nonprofits, ensuring that 100% of all donations reached their target. For donors vying for part of that match, however, there’s no news yet about who received it. Facebook says it will share those notifications sometime after November 29.
“Our goal is to help people support causes they care about by making it easier to fundraise on Facebook,” says Naomi Gleit, VP of Social Good at Facebook in an email to Fast Company. “It’s incredibly inspiring and humbling to see the impact our community is having for causes big and small around the world.”
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