Creating a Facebook page is the first step any nonprofit might take to grow its support. With over 3 billion monthly users (2 billion users daily), it is the world’s largest social media platform by a considerable margin. It may have started in Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm but it grew into a truly global platform, with India home to the most Facebook users (384 million) and the Global South making up the vast majority of the platform’s top countries.
And Facebook leaned into its global popularity to expand its reach further. Free Basics, which it launched in 2016 to provide limited internet services (like Facebook) to lesser served areas via partnerships with mobile carriers, provides mobile internet access to over 100 million people in at least 65 countries. Users in the West may be ditching the platform for various reasons but Facebook is the internet in many places around the world: in my experience, the more rural the area, the more likely Facebook was the best way to contact a business. It’s quickly become a vital way for people across the globe to communicate, learn important information and share vital resources.
So why isn’t Facebook Fundraising accessible to its primarily global userbase?
Facebook Fundraising was launched to great excitement in 2017: a way for nonprofits to not only create their own fundraising pages but also encourage their supporters to leverage their networks and passion for the mission by creating birthday fundraisers themselves. The reporting was never great but the program has been successful, raising over $8 billion. Initially launched in the US and a number of other countries, it looked like Facebook was working towards expanding globally, giving grassroots organizations everywhere the opportunity to promote their causes and expand their reach worldwide at a time when Western supporters were increasingly interested in supporting local, grassroots organizations.
But then the expansion stopped…and then started contracting?
In July 2024, Facebook stopped processing charitable donations and removed fundraising tools from the European Economic Area (EEA) as part of their scaling back of features in light of European privacy laws. That follows its suspension in India, where it paused operations in April 2021 due to government regulations requiring donor IDs and user information that confirms the donor’s identity.
This leaves only nonprofits based in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States able to use the tool now (with a slightly larger list of countries who are able to donate to fundraisers based in those countries).
In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t that big of a deal. Facebook Fundraising is great in terms of reducing the steps towards conversion but besides the reporting issues, reports show that supporters prefer pages and links they can share elsewhere. But considering how many of Facebook’s users live outside of those four countries (and instances of Facebook being used to sow seeds of conflict and ethnic cleansing around the world), it’s simply disappointing that Meta isn’t able to make their fundraising tools available in the areas where it’s used the most.
A platform actively striving to make itself invaluable in low resource areas is leaving out the nonprofits trying to improve those same communities. Leaving charities based in those four countries also inadvertently props up the white saviorism historically endemic within international development instead of letting the platform truly become a global marketplace where local causes can gain vital support from those interested in supporting great causes, no matter where they are. What amount of good could be done if nonprofits in the Global South had full access to integrated tools that allowed them to easily appeal to their local communities and international do gooders alike on the platform that worked to embed itself into the communications and information fabric of their societies?
