Facebook Donation Match

November 20th, 2018
ea
For the last three years Facebook has offered donation matching on Giving Tuesday (11/27) where the first $X to be donated is matched 1:1. In general, I'm pretty skeptical about donation matches: much of the time when someone tells you you can "double your donation" that's not really what's going to happen. Specifically, if I donate $X, the charity ends up about $X richer than if I hadn't donated, not the $2X I might have been led to believe.

In this case, though, there's a $7M pool of money that will go first-come-first-served. This is more or less distributing money to charities more or less in proportion to how organized and coordinated their donors are, and I think that's something the EA community can do really well with! Here's what you do:

  • Visit EA Giving Tuesday.

  • Follow the full instructions or at least the basic instructions.

  • Add all your credit cards to Facebook, call your credit card company to let them know you'll be doing this, get your credit limit rasied if you need to, make practice donations, etc, per the instructions.

I expect the full match to be used up in under 10s, and definitely under a minute, so the faster you can donate the larger your chance of getting your donation matched. Testing, I can do eight donations in about eight seconds:

There's a $20k limit per person, and a $2,499 limit per donation, so I'm going to be trying to make eight donations. That's beyond the limit of my 2% cash back credit card, so I'll be doing six on that card, and two on a 1.5% card.

Update 2018-12-05: it looks like I got the maximum $20k match! I've updated the donations page to show this. It's in grey and not included in our totals, like all other donations that I feel morally responsible for but aren't strictly from us.

Referenced in:

Comment via: google plus, facebook, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Differential diagnosis of loveshyness

In my life coaching practice, I see a lot of male clients who have trouble getting dates (including fairly severe trouble, such as never having been kissed in spite of being in their thirties).

via Thing of Things February 6, 2026

2025-26 New Year review

This is an annual post reviewing the last year and setting intentions for next year. I look over different life areas (work, health, parenting, effectiveness, etc) and analyze my life tracking data. Highlights include a minimal group house, the usefulness…

via Victoria Krakovna January 19, 2026

Family Christmas

Unlike many families my family celebrates Christmas with really really a lot of our family. This past year there were about 29 people at my Grandfather's house in the week around Christmas. I know what you're thinking: how does that work? It's…

via Lily Wise's Blog Posts January 3, 2026

more     (via openring)