Facebook Giving Tuesday

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Hey members - at November’s board meeting there was talk about Facebook’s promise to match some donations on Giving Tuesday, so some people were waiting until that day to make donations for MakeICT’s building fund thinking their donation might be doubled. That meeting was the first I’d heard of it. Since then I did some research and wanted to post to clarify.

  1. Facebook will match $7M dollars of donations across every charity in the US. Last year, they hit the limit “within seconds” inside that 7:00AM time. I know $7M sounds like a lot of cash to you and me, but with 170M US facebook users, it’s kind of like they’re offering each of us four cents. Think of those black friday deals where ten people will get a cheap huge TV but 500 people show up at the door to trample each other. Facebook loves everybody being at their door.

  2. It’s only for organizations that are qualified to accept donations through Facebook. We had to apply for this, just noticed that there are hoops to jump through, and they asked for three weeks to review our application. Reading about the program they tell the organizations who won a match in January 2020 - so maybe if we’re approved we’d get a match? But we don’t really know, do we?

  3. Facebook is not taking a cut of donations, so it’s safe to donate through facebook and know that your whole donation goes to help the organization. That’s nice. Just FYI Facebook does charge some fees on “personal fundraisers” so if you ever want to throw your buddy $50 after his house fire, you’d be better off just throwing him $50.

  4. The negative nancy in me wonders if this matching scheme is more of a publicity stunt to get organizations to sign up for their system and drive users there.

  5. But the positive penny (is that a thing?) in me says it’s AWESOME to see people asking their facebook friends for MakeICT donations! So do that!

  6. My company has a matching gift program for employees - you might check with yours.

  7. Amazon smile definitely gives us all a cut, so don’t forget to do your holiday shopping through http://smile.amazon.com and pick MakeICT as your target recipient.

  8. The gofundme page that Kate made is beautiful! http://gf.me/u/wn9x99

  9. I’d love to make a sign with your name on it. http://makeict.org/donate

Summary: I think Facebook’s Giving Tuesday match is too good to be true, but you should donate to MakeICT anyway, and I don’t care how you do it or when.

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@Kim Thanks for the research and sharing. It really helps clarify what is going on.

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Hey guys - thanks to John, it looks like PayPal might be matching 10% of donations today. I just did it. We’ll see what happens! Here is the link I was given to share.

I wanted to donate through paypal because this quarter my credit card (chase freedom) is giving me an extra 5% on paypal stuff using my card. Reading here about how they’re waiving fees for donations convinced me to hit the button today.

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Looks like they are doing this every Tuesday in December up to $600,000 each day at 5AM our time.

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Did we…can we run the donations for the printer through?

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That’s an equipment buy, I would keep that separate

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My thought was…donations are donations…there is no stipulation on how the match is spent. Could even benefit the print area. Maximize donations was my goal.

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I was meaning for grant purposes, sorry. We can’t count dollars earmarked for one thing as money towards another. It can be counted as a donation but not in the $118, 400 we’re trying to raise for the building.

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I was speaking to the PayPal 10% match. I agree with you that it would not count toward the 118k