Instagram To Enable In-App Nonprofit Donations

Facebook is adding three new features throughout its platforms to help with fundraising efforts, the most visible of which is a donate button that nonprofits will have on their Instagram profiles, according to a report by The Verge.

Facebook is also adding a fundraising sticker to Facebook stories, and fundraising on live gamer streams. The button for nonprofits will be on the profile next to where phone numbers are listed. Before the feature was added, users could use the donation sticker in Instagram stories, but the stories would disappear after 24 hours.

Facebook is letting Level Up Gamers pick a cause and ask viewers for donations. When someone donates, a notification will pop up, and the streamer will be able to mention the person by name.

Also, Facebook is going to help nonprofits find volunteers by allowing to list upcoming opportunities on their pages and let people sign up from there.

Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion, and the company has been scrutinized lately by lawmakers and regulators alike over the potential antitrust issues of the deal.

Recently, Amin Zoufonoun, who heads Facebook’s mergers and acquisitions (M&A), defended the company’s Instagram purchase in a Facebook post.

“I want to acknowledge that in some ways we absolutely considered Instagram a competitor,” Zoufonoun, Facebook’s vice president of Corporate Development, wrote in the post on Nov. 11. “Since there has been a fair amount of chatter on that point, I think it is important to explain a little more about this.”

In his post, Zoufonoun noted that the mobile photo-sharing space was crowded, pointing to Foursquare, Path, VSCO Cam, Viddy and Snapseed.

“Our hope was to bring together social networking and mobile photo sharing. But without question, this was a big, unproven bet at the time,” he wrote.