Facebook will solicit donations to fight Ebola
It seems like $25 million was just a start.
You may recall that Facebook’s co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife pledged that much last month to help fight Ebola. A few weeks later, Zuckerberg’s company is now rolling out a fundraising pitch at the top news feeds for Facebook users in more than 30 countries. The money will go to three groups working in West Africa: the Red Cross, International Medical Corps and Save the Children.
Helping stop Ebola in its tracks is clearly a philanthropic act, says Facebook executive Naomi Gleit. But really, she says the company’s mission to make the world more open and connected.
“And when the world is more open and connected, together we can do really great things,” she says.
Facebook hopes its campaign will jump start a wave of philanthropic giving that’s been slow coming. After the Haitian earthquake, for example, the International Medical Corp. received more than 8000 donations, for Ebola it’s been a tenth of that. Yale’s Nicholas Christakis sees two reasons why Facebook’s campaign may work.
“They have the scale which is enormous, you know countless millions,” he says. “But also they have the ability to use peer effects to magnify the impact, because of course you are more likely to respond to something if your friends have also responded to it,” he says.
The World Health Organization says containing the virus will require $1 billion dollars as well as hundreds of healthcare worker volunteers. It’s clear Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has taken that challenge to heart, says Jim Ferris of the USC Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy.
“It’s what I would call all-in philanthropy. Really being out there, entrepreneurial, it’s not just writing a check,” he says.
He says Zuckerberg’s entrepreneurial approach is part of a new trend where individual donors and foundations throw themselves into their own causes.
Given the scale of the threat in West Africa, it might be good that one of the world’s richest people is locked in.
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