Instagram now lets you raise funds for personal causes
In a recent blog post, the Facebook-owned social network Instagram has been announced to introduce fundraisers for personal causes. Those can be launched for yourself, a small business that you own, for friends in need or a cause that you stand behind.Facebook begins the announcement with the following information about prior fundraising efforts on its platforms:
Since January, people have raised more than $65 million for COVID-19 and racial justice fundraisers globally across Instagram and Facebook. And in the last 30 days, donations on Instagram have doubled in the US. From people raising money to buy medical equipment for Black Lives Matter protesters, rebuilding Black-owned small businesses affected by COVID-19 and funding educational resources related to racial justice, people are eager to mobilize around causes they care about. Now, we’re making it easier to create fundraisers directly on Instagram that benefit such personal causes.
As of July 21st, money can be raised on Instagram via the new Personal Fundraiser feature in question, although only by a small group of users in the US, UK and Ireland. Eligible to donate to such fundraisers are all users who live in countries where Instagram’s donation sticker is available, and are over the age of 18. This age restriction also applies to users who wish to start a fundraising campaign.
To launch a fundraising campaign through the new feature, users in the above-mentioned countries need to open their Instagram accounts, then tap on “Edit Profile”, “Add Fundraiser”, and lastly “Raise Money”. Users will then be prompted to choose a photo to represent their fundraising campaign, choose a fundraiser category, and add more details to help tell the story behind the campaign, and to encourage other Instagram users to donate.
Stripe is the only payment processing platform Instagram is currently using for the Personal Fundraiser feature, so users launching a fundraiser will also need to enter information into Stripe’s website. Afterwards, the fundraiser will go through a review process before it can finally be launched. All fundraisers are said to last 30 days, although they can be extended as many times as the campaign owner wants.
Instagram says it will be expanding Personal Fundraiser in the US, UK and Ireland in the future, and allow for fundraisers to be shareable in users’ Feed and Stories. Currently there’s no information to suggest that the new feature will be made available to users in other countries.