Facebook's new feature to help charities raise money online

Tech giant Facebook has come up with a new feature that can help nonprofits and charity organisations to raise money for the causes they care about, the company said.

Several months after the social network launched a new "fundraiser" feature for nonprofits to collect donations, Facebook announced it has expanded the tool to individual users.

The tool is now available to 1 per cent of US users — standard for new Facebook products in order to gather feedback and make sure there are not any bugs — but it will roll out to all US users in the coming weeks.

The new fundraisers are the latest feature from Facebook's Social Good team, which officially launched in September 2015 and is the force behind tools like Safety Check and Amber Alerts.

Focusing on products aimed at crisis response and charitable giving, the team now hopes to break down barriers and empower people to use the tools it is building.

"We had Facebook fundraising for nonprofits with International Medical Corps in Nepal and then last year... nonprofits could fundraise for themselves," Naomi Gleit, Vice President of product management for social good at Facebook, said in a statement.

"But the real vision has always been people fundraising for nonprofits."

The inspiration for the tool came from the AlS Ice Bucket Challenge, which went viral in 2014. Facebook saw people raising money and awareness, but the AlS Association told Facebook that it couldn't handle the volume of traffic to its website, nor could it accept international currencies.

Now, users will be able to donate directly through Facebook or start their own campaigns.

Any US-based nonprofit that holds a 501(c)3 status, has a verified Facebook page and agrees to the Facebook Pages Terms can sign up for the programme.

As part of the initial rollout on Thursday, fundraiser creators can choose from nearly 100 charities, such as the Nature Conservancy, Alzheimer's Association and Oxfam.

"Before we actually disburse funds to them, depending on how much money it is, we will do some more quality control," Gleit said about the nonprofits overall.

"We just want to make sure there's no fraud, so there's an additional layer of vetting," Gleit added.

While only US users can create fundraisers, people around the world can donate.