HONESTLY.

Most of the buzz recently has been about developers finally monetizing the apps they’ve been furiously churning out to gain exposure on Facebook, MySpace, and the iPhone. Add another category sitting on a potential windfall: nonprofits.

I recently joined a Facebook “Cause.” It’s basically a platform intended to make philanthropy easy, accessible, and socially appealing.

Sad. (sniff!)

Not so fast: turns out there’s a serious obstacle standing in the way of maximizing the efficiency (and thus, the appeal) of the donation process, evidenced by the fact that a piddling 50 bucks had been raised among my particular cause’s +1,500 members. What are they, cheapskates? Heck, I thought, I’ll pony up. Every little bit counts, right?

Depends on who’s doing the counting. When I hit the “Donate” button, I discovered that the minimum for contributions was $10. Sticker-shocked, I immediately knew that price point is far too high for the average Facebook demographic, especially in a serious economic recession. But it’s more than that. Instead of capitalizing on the feeling of empowerment many first-time donors had to the Obama campaign, Facebook is effectively throwing a wet blanket on those whose strength in the Election of ‘08 was a product of their collective good intentions—not the size of each individual’s wallet.

I know it’s not Facebook’s fault; the micropayment infrastructure isn’t quite there yet to support it. After a disastrous experiment with PayPal, they’ve been mostly working with third-party payment processors.

From the site:

Donations to U.S. nonprofits are processed by our nonprofit partner Network for Good, an industry leader in processing online donations. Their 4.75% fee is used to pay banks, credit card companies, to distribute funds to nonprofits, and for other associated costs of donations through Causes on Facebook. For a $100 donation, $95.25 goes to the nonprofit and $4.75 goes to Network for Good. Network for Good does not profit from this fee.

Okay, well, it’s nice that the third party is a nonprofit, but the writing on the wall is clear: this platform doesn’t make the most efficient use of my hard-earned dollars.

Are they still working on that, as promised?

Hmm… it looks like they’re taking their time. (I recommend reading the comments on that one; thanks to Dan Taylor for the link.)