Does the Facebook fundraiser feature take recurring monthly payments? Fact Check

A message is being copied across Facebook that warns readers about Facebook’s Fundraiser feature, which, according to the message, can take recurring monthly payments when the person making the donation only intended to make a one-time donation.

Facebook Fundraiser is a feature on the social networking platform that allows users to make payments to charitable causes without having to leave the Facebook platform.

An example of the rumour can be seen below –

I donated $50 toward someone’s Facebook birthday fundraiser for Alzheimer’s Foundation last month. I used my debit card. Today, looking at my checking account, I see the $50 payment, and the notation says “recurring payment”. The bank wasn’t open yet, but I knew my brother had donated as well, so I called him. He called to check on his, and sure enough, his was set to recur each month for 12 months. When Wells Fargo opened, I called customer service, and my account was set to be debited each month for 12 months. So, instead of donating $50, and thinking I was doing a good thing, I was donating $600! It clearly stated on Facebook “Janice donated $50. Thank you for your $50 donation”. Get this: the nice lady I talked to at Wells Fargo had just gone through the same thing!
Who else has had this happen? I’m sure there’s undoubtably a default mechanism in fine print, and I probably needed to uncheck “recurring payment” and check “non-recurring payment”, but if it was there, I didn’t see it, and neither did Eddie.
THIS IS FRAUD! But how do you report Facebook? To whom would I report it???
I just researched this, and Facebook also charges: 5% transaction fee, 6.9% processing fee, along with .30 cents per donation.

It is true that Facebook, in 2018, began introducing a feature that would allow Facebook users to set up recurring payments when donating to a charity on Facebook. This is one of the options Facebook users should set on the donation set up page, which we’ve included below as a screenshot.

As you can see, users can select One Time Donation, Daily Donation, Monthly Donation or Annual Donation. Selecting any of the recurring options will set up a direct debit with your bank account and Facebook. It is possible, since this is a new feature, that some Facebook users didn’t notice the new, extra options on the set up page and inadvertently set up a monthly donation plan as opposed to a one time donation.

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As such, this is one of the many reasons why we do recommend that you regularly check your bank statements for any suspicious or unexpected payments being taken from your bank account, especially if you shop (or donate) online frequently.

Additional claims about charges made by Facebook when donating – which were retracted in the original post but copied elsewhere on Facebook – are misleading. There are NO fees involved when donating to a non-profit charity on Facebook.

However if you are donating to a personal fundraiser on Facebook, there are some charges, though these are levied on the person who created the fundraiser, not the person donating. These charges include a 30 cent fee and a 2.6% processing fee in the United States (though this varies depending which country you are in.) A full list of costs can be seen here.