Facebook raised more than $125 million on Giving Tuesday, the largest amount ever raised on the platform in a single day, it announced on Thursday. Thousands created fundraisers to support their favorite causes, including a bunch of gamers who helped debut a new charity livestreaming feature.
Facebook Gaming first tested the new feature in October with a handful of video game content creators before rolling it out to a wider group on Giving Tuesday. It’s currently only available to U.S. streamers, but donations can be accepted from viewers around the globe. About 25 streamers teamed up with various non-profit organizations, including Autism Speaks, the Call of Duty Endowment, The Humane Society of the United States, and more. Those streamers included The DangerousThing aka DT, DiMez, TheMissesMae, and X-Bit Gaming.
“Our goal is to help people support causes they care about by making it easier to fundraise on Facebook,” said Naomi Gleit, VP of social good at Facebook. “It’s incredibly inspiring and humbling to see the impact our community is having for causes big and small around the world.”
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The charity livestreaming tools are designed to be intuitive, Facebook said. Viewers can give donations without leaving the stream, while the streamers can set and change donation goals, enable a progress bar, and more from the dashboard. More content creators will get access to the feature in the future. Facebook said it will also add more charitable organizations to choose from.
Last year, Facebook said it raised $45 million for charity on Giving Tuesday.
Although the 92nd Street Y — the organization behind Giving Tuesday — is still counting all of the donations, it said it’s approaching nearly $400 million raised in the U.S. alone. It’s now surpassed a billion dollars in online donations since it began the annual event seven years ago.
