Facebook launches charitable gifts

Facebook getting into social gifting was big. On a human level at least, giving social gifting a charitable bent might be even bigger.

The recently announced addition to the service allows people to make a charitable contribution in celebration of a friend or a family member.

The mechanism behind the product works in exactly the same way as the ordinary Facebook gifts does. All that’s different is that the gift can take the form of a charitable donation to any one of Facebook’s partner non-profit organizations.

“We are especially pleased to be launching this test now – when so many people are looking for new ways to help the victims of Hurricane Sandy, or assist those most in need around the holidays”, the social network said.

With each charitable contribution on Facebook, you can choose which nonprofit you would like to support. If you’re uncertain about which organization to choose, you can also let your friend make the choice.

For the initial test Facebook is partnering with 11 organisations, including:

• American Red Cross
• Blue Star Families
• Boys & Girls Clubs of America
• DonorsChoose.org
• Girls Inc.
• Kiva
• LIVESTRONG
• Oxfam America
• RAINN
• St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital
• Water.org

For now the service appears to only be available to US users, but Facebook says that it plans to roll it out more broadly in the coming months.