My kid brother, and when I say kid brother I mean he is 62 years old, recently lost his spouse of thirty years. She died from complications due to Lupus, which I did not know was a thing. Turns out, that while there are great treatments 10 to 20 percent of those suffering Lupus die from the disease or complications due to other pre-existing conditions. Sadly, that happened to my sister-in-law. The death was slow, despite the best efforts of her doctors, financially costly in spite of insurance, and for my brother, emotionally devastating. He continues to struggle with the toll of her loss, but has decided that from this year on out he does not want birthday gifts other than a donation, no matter how small, to the Lupus Foundation, a well respected charitable organization working to develop new treatments and cures for Lupus.
Meta created a chance for people to create donation pages for when they would want people to donate to a worthy cause for a person’s birthday. My brother took them up on this and created a donation page. You can find it here, and if you or a loved one suffers from Lupus this is a great organization to donate to.
www.facebook.com/…
His goal was modest: $200.00, and he has already exceeded that, so this article is not a plea for more money. But if you have a few ducats to spare, he has three weeks before Meta shuts it down. It is a good cause and if you can toss a buck or two at it the Lupus Foundation would be grateful. My brother does not get a dime. This is not a Go Fund Me page.
But that is not why I am writing this. This is why:
Below is Meta’s terms for its birthday fundraisers. In short they will kick in $2.00 dollars to each fundraiser. That is all:
“For eligible nonprofits, Meta may donate to birthday fundraisers created on Facebook.
Eligibility
To be eligible for Meta donations to birthday fundraisers:
- Nonprofit the fundraiser is raising money for must be onboarded to Facebook’s Fundraising Tools
- Nonprofit must be US-based
- Fundraiser creator must be US-based
- Maximum of one Meta donation gift from Facebook per user, per year
- Account of the person creating the birthday fundraiser must have been active for longer than 60 days
About the donation
After the first donation is made to an eligible birthday fundraiser, Meta may make a donation.
Other donors and supporters will be able to see the donation from Meta.
If you've blocked the Meta page, then you won't see the Meta donation on your fundraiser. The donation will still be made.”
It isn’t $2.00 dollars for each $100.00 dollars raised or anything approaching a matching gift, it is just two bucks; the amount of money that might have fallen out of Mark Zuckerberg’s pocket as he was tipping his Uber driver.
Meta might have well have said that for each fundraiser they would send a special message to the recipient to “Get a job, loser.”
Now I can understand that they have millions of users and each of those users has a birthday, and if each user was as altruistic as my brother, it could cost them some serious scratch. But 2 sawbucks? Really? Why don’t you promise to send them a ShamWow and a cubic zirconia ring?
So I donated, of course. And if anyone has anymore to spare after this expensive and exhausting election go to the Facebook page and spend a buck or two, or not. It definitely goes to a good cause.
But nothing sends the message of complete contempt for one’s users than a effing $2.00 one time contribution. Thanks Meta and Mark Zuckerberg. Wouldn’t want to deprive you of one of your many yachts.