Inside Facebook

Earlier today, popular Facebook application Causes announced that it has reached an important milestone: $10 million has been raised through the app in the past two years, half of which came in over the last six months. 26,000 causes received donations by 192,000 unique donors. The “Birthday Wish” feature alone has accounted for $1.4 million of the total.

For Causes, which currently has over 25 million monthly active users, the goal has always been converting interest into action: it’s one thing to join a cause, but it’s another to share content, recruit friends to join, fundraise on behalf of the cause (on your birthday), and ultimately donate your own money – increasing the ask level as users become more actively engaged.

Today, the app is proving that it can be a more powerful fundraising tool that some think. Still today, some causes with large member bases have raised less than those with significantly fewer members, suggesting that one of the most effective fundraising strategies is to leverage your own personal relationships.

According to Causes, the $10 million raised means:

• Clean drinking water for 50,000 people for 20 years
• 1 million bed nets to stop the spread of malaria
• Safe, private shelter for 10,000 refugee families of five
• First-time internet access for 100,000 low-income households
• 50,000 baskets of baby chickens for families in Cameroon

Congratulations to the Causes team!