Instagram Adds New Prompts to Support Social Causes & Charities
By: Leanne Lambert
Instagram is testing ways to raise awareness of social causes. There will be a pop-up on the hashtag search page that is designed to highlight selected movements so users can spread the word in several ways.
How it works is that you search for certain cause-related hashtags, and a new pop-up will ask if you would like to either share the hashtag page with your connections or create your own fundraiser. 100% of donations will go back to each organization.
As explained by Instagram:
“Hashtags have long been a place where people discover new causes to support on Instagram, and now when you search for specific hashtags associated with certain movements, you’ll have the option to support them.”
Instagram says that many users have requested more direct ways to social causes and charities.
“We’re rolling this out first to a handful of hashtags that are focused on popular and long-standing movements on Instagram and in the world, like #BlackLivesMatter, #womensrights and #climatecrisis.”
The wonderful thing is that the new feature will raise awareness of each movement, while also making more users aware of Instagram’s charitable donations feature, which enables anybody to promote a charity relevant to them via their profile and posts.
Instagram leans into its expanded eCommerce push by getting users more accustomed to transferring funds in-app to support donation-type features, including charity fundraisers, as well as tipping and creator funding tools. Although there is a commercial element to this new feature, the fact that the app will offer a reach of over a billion users to raise awareness of social causes and charities is really a remarkable thing!
The new prompts are being tested now.