Facebook Inc (NYSE:FB) has just announced that it has waived all transaction fees on donations made on its platform that are given to non-profit organizations.
The company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, made the statement Wednesday morning and their aim for this is to increase the social network’s presence in online crowd fundraising. Before, there was a 5% transaction fee on the donations made to nonprofits on their website but will continue to hold their current 6.9% fee with a 30 cents per donation charge to those donations given to individuals or companies not listed as a nonprofit.
Zuckerberg also announced the company is setting up a $50 million annual Facebook Inc Donation Fund to match the giving that is done on its website to certain larger causes.
At the event held in New York he said, “When I started Facebook, I wasn’t thinking about it as a way to raise money to fight diseases, but a few years in, we noticed many people were using it to raise money for different causes.”
Back in the beginning of the year, there was a petition circling around that was signed by 42,000 individuals who demanded that the social network should waive its fees.
Along with the elimination of their fees, Facebook will be launching a specific software named, Fundraisers API, that will grant current Facebook fundraisers the opportunity to sync with other fundraising pages. Other major sites used for fundraising have higher fees than facebook currently. The most popular, GoFundMe, is at 7.9% plus 30 cents and Kickstarter is at a whopping 8% plus a 20 cents donation.
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