Instagram adds fundraising to Reels to help nonprofits

NEW YORK (AP) — Meta Platforms Inc., the social media giant formerly known as Facebook, plans to celebrate Earth Day by expanding its offering of fundraising tools and making them more easily available to 1.5 million nonprofits on its Facebook and Instagram platforms, including those involved in fighting climate change.

Starting Tuesday, Instagram users can attach donation buttons to their Reels, turning the short videos into fundraisers. As it does for donations on Facebook and other Instagram content, Meta will collect and pass along the donations to the nonprofits at no charge, paying the processing fees itself.

More than $6 billion has been donated on Facebook and Instagram since fundraising began on the platforms in 2015, according to Emily Dalton Smith, Meta’s vice president of product management and social impact. Donations jumped $1 billion in nine months in 2021, with 100 million creators and donors taking part in fundraising on the social media platforms.

The bulk of those gifts are coming from small donors. The majority of donations on Instagram in 2021 were under $20.

“It’s just lots of people coming together and giving whatever they can to causes," Dalton Smith said.

Expanding fundraising to new platforms has created some surprising results. On Instagram, the environmental nonprofit that has received the most donations isn’t a household name. It’s The Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit founded in 2013 by a then-18-year-old inventor, Boyan Slat in the Netherlands, who wanted to rid the oceans of plastic.

Dalton Smith said The Ocean Cleanup has succeeded because it is “Instagram-first,” building its communities on the platform. The eye-catching images and graphics, along with weekly updates on its plastics-removal missions and its partnerships with Coldplay, have...