SAN FRANCISCO: In line with building a safe online community, Facebook has announced updates to its Safety Check feature, giving people in the US an option to start a fundraiser from within this feature.

The social networking giant aims to make fundraising easier on its platform during a crisis and will enable people to create or donate to a fundraiser for charitable and personal causes to help those in need.

"Fundraising provides a way for people who are also outside of the crisis area to offer help," Facebook said in a blog post on Wednesday.

The Fundraisers in Safety Check will start to roll out in the coming weeks in the US.

Facebook also expanded its "Community Help" to desktops to make sure that those in need are able to access Community Help through any platform.

"Community Help will be available in the upcoming weeks on desktop, giving people another way to access the tool. Additionally, Community Help is now available for all crises where Safety Check is activated," Facebook said.

According to Facebook, Safety Check has been activated more than 600 times in two years and has notified people that their families and friends are safe more than a billion times.

Those who survive a crisis can now add a personal note to tell their friends more about what's happening from within the Safety Check tool. This note will appear in the News Feed story that is automatically generated when people mark themselves safe.

To help provide additional context on crises and make sure people have the information that they need, Facebook has started adding descriptions about the crisis from NC4, its third party global crisis reporting agency.

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