A few hours ago, Facebook reported on its official blog that people have raised over $300 million for over 750,000 non-profits through Facebook’s Birthday Fundraisers in the first year.

Birthday Fundraisers was launched last year by Facebook, in order to urge people around the world to collect donations for non-profit charities by enabling Facebook users to make fundraiser posts in celebration of their birthday and inviting their friends to prompt donations instead of gifts.

Launching the “Birthday Fundraisers” feature wasn’t Facebook’s only effort on the matter, in November 2017, Facebook gave up fees, so 100% of all donations made to nonprofits on Facebook go directly to the nonprofits.

In the same context, Facebook also reported the top beneficiaries of birthday fundraisers. which are St. Jude, Alzheimer’s Association, the American Cancer Society, Share Our Strength – No Kid Hungry, and the ASPCA.

Moreover, as a celebration of that huge donations’ number and the success of the birthday fundraisers, Facebook adds some new features and tools, that are expected to raise the donations by helping people to easily find nonprofits to support in the year ahead. Some of those features are:

• Ability to match donations and add organizers to your fundraiser.
• Pages run by brands, public figures, and nonprofits themselves can now create and donate to fundraisers.
• A tool enables people to make recurring monthly donations to the organizations.
• New Nonprofit Selection Tools: It will be launched soon to make it easier to choose across the 750,000 nonprofits on Facebook. The user will be provided with more information: when he clicks on a nonprofit on the list, he can learn more about the organization, their mission, location and how many people like their Page.

As explained by Facebook:

“Many people have told us that they want to dedicate their birthdays to a good cause. But with over 750,000 nonprofits on Facebook, it can be difficult to choose.”

“We’re excited to see the impact that people will make over the next year, and we’re inspired to help make future fundraisers and birthdays even more memorable.”

In the same report, Facebook also listed some of the people who dedicated their birthdays in inspiring ways over the past year, including:

1. Yuriko Shotter – $7,201 For 13th Street Cat Rescue.
2. Valentine Toohey Smith – $1,914 For charity: water.
3. Aldo Billingslea – $7,066 For Lorraine Hansberry Theatre in San Francisco and raised.
4. NBA star Stephen Curry – $82,512 For Nothing But Nets.
5.  Madonna Raising Malawi’s work at Home of Hope orphanage located in a rural, high-need area of Malawi.

Finally, we should point out that for US users, to run their own birthday fundraiser, they will be notified in the weeks before the event, with a News Feed notification popping up to prompt them to start their own.