Using YouTube To Donate To Charity

YouTube has unveiled donation cards that can be added to videos, allowing users to donate to a nonprofit through the online video platform. Neither the nonprofit featured in donation cards nor the creator of the video get to see the donor’s contact information. Those interested in raising money can enable the donation cards by going into the Video Manager and clicking on the drop-down menu to select “Cards”. They must be US-based with an IRS 501©3 validation to participate. Should you ultimately click “Donate”, your contribution will go directly to whichever charity the participating creator has linked to his or her video. The chosen organization receives 100% of the amount donated, with Google covering the processing fees.

YouTube users could, or course, always use annotations in their videos to link to fundraising sites, but those are probably far less likely to result in actual donations than a YouTube card.

Currently, the program is only available to YouTube users in the U.S., but Google plans to open the program to more countries in the coming weeks and months so that “creators across the world can power nonprofits they care about”.

YouTube, which was acquired by Google in November 2006 for $1.65 billion, now has more than 1 billion users worldwide. “That’s nearly one-third of all people on the Internet”, states YouTube in a blog post announcing the new feature. With millions of hours of videos and billions of views, YouTube says that there are “billions of opportunities” for donations.