GivingTuesday is coming up later this month, and to mark the ‘season of giving’, Meta has announced that it will match user donations, up to $7 million, to the various charities promoted across its apps.

Though it’s gone about explaining this in a fairly convoluted way:

“When you sign up to donate monthly to a nonprofit on Facebook, Meta will match 100% of your donation after you make your second monthly donation. We’ll match up to $100 per donation, $100,000 per nonprofit and up to $7 million in total across all organizations.”

So Meta will match your first donation amount when you make a second subscribed donation, I think, which is a means to get people committed to ongoing donations, as opposed to one-off pledges.

Either way, the bottom line is that Meta’s committed to giving $7 million to charitable causes across the platform, for commitments made between November 15th and December 31st, while it’s also covering donation processing fees within the period, so that everything raised through fundraisers goes directly to the organization that you choose.

And so Apple doesn’t take out a 30% cut, those sneaky devils.

In addition to this, Meta’s also provided some new stats on donation activity across its apps, including this overview of the top 10 fundraisers in Meta’s history.

Meta also says that over $7 billion has been collectively raised across Facebook and Instagram for nonprofits, while it also notes that over 80% of donations made in its apps this year have come via fundraisers created by people, and shared with their friends and family.

So they do work – when you see a friend promoting a cause, that actually is contributing to the greater good.

This is probably the single biggest tick in Meta’s favor, in regards to its broader societal impact – that through its massive scale it’s been able to help raise awareness of many, many charitable causes, and inspire action by providing a platform for people to promote the same.

For all its other impacts, Meta does serve a valuable purpose in this respect, and $7 billion is a huge amount that’s gone directly to charities as a result of promotions in its apps.

It could be worth getting involved this year, and launching your own fundraiser for a non-profit on Facebook or IG.