Facebook pledges $50M a year to match

NEW YORK — Facebook is pledging $50 million a year to match disaster-relief donations, part of a bevy of tools and efforts around charitable causes the social media giant announced on Wednesday.

The pledge isn’t all new money, but represents an effort to formalize matches Facebook has already been making on an ad-hoc basis. For example, it matched user donations up to $1 million for Hurricane Harvey relief earlier this year. The company says it has not yet determined how it will distribute the money.

Facebook also said it will give relief organizations such as the Red Cross access to data on what users need and where they are during a disaster.

While Facebook users can already see individual pleas and offers for help, relief groups will get a broader set of aggregated, organized data similar to what Facebook sees. That includes realtime maps showing where people need help, whether that’s water, shelter or baby supplies.