Facebook Launches New Fund-raising Tool Drives

Facebook has launched a new tool that allows users in the US to raise food, clothing and other essentials for those in need. This feature, known as Drives, is provided through Facebook's existing community help center, which is where Facebook gathers requests and provides help in local communities.

The Community Help Center was first launched in 2017 as a way for Facebook users to pool resources after a crisis. By 2020, this feature has become widely available as part of the Facebook COVID-19 initiative, and there is even a global Community Help feature to Help those affected by COVID-19 outbreaks.

Now, with the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States and millions of people losing their jobs, 12 million people could lose their unemployment benefits when the country's health care law expires in December. In addition, food insecurity and the inability to pay bills, including rents and mortgages, and manage other household expenses are also affecting millions of people.

Facebook plans a campaign that will allow users to create and share their own efforts to collect items for those in need.

If you want to create a Drives, the user needs to enter the Community Help Hub in the Facebook search. Then click the "Request or Offer Help" button, and in the bottom form click "Create Drives." Users can then fill in the form and set the number of items they want to collect. When you publish Drives, others will see what else is required for the target Drives. Once created, Drives will appear on the user's News Feed and time line, just like a regular article.

Although this feature has been launched today, Facebook’s initial blog post stated that this feature may not be widely available to everyone in a few weeks.

Facebook notes that all posts in Community Help, including Drives, will be censored to ensure that they do not violate Facebook's Community standards or Community Help product policies. These policies ban insensitive and promotional content, spam, untrue posts and posts from users under 18. The company also stated that if a post is found to be in violation, they will take it down.

Drives is one of several initiatives Facebook announced today around holiday giving. The company also said it would provide eligible donations of up to $7 million to U.S. nonprofits on December 1st Charity Day and exclusively run its own fund-raising event, Peace Through Music: A Global Event for Social Justice, on Facebook Live. The event will be held on December 1st at 12pm US time and there will be Aloe Blacc, Billie Eilish, Becky G, Carlos Santana, Cindy Blackman Santana, Killer Mike, Ringo Starr, Skip Marley and more. The campaign will also include The Playing for Change Foundation, The United Nations Population Fund, Sankofa, Silkroad and The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation.

At the same time, Instagram will soon have access to a new financing vehicle. Instagram users can now raise money through Stories and stickers on Instagram Live. A new feature will allow Instagram users to post fund-raising information on their Instagram feeds, but Facebook did not provide a specific time when the feature will be launched.