For her 35th birthday, Behnoush Babzani decided to hold a party. She used her birthday to ask friends to donate money to a cause she cares about: helping people who need bone marrow transplants. Babzani herself received bone marrow from her brother in a transplant operation. “It’s not that my body was making cancerous cells. It was that my body was making no cells,” she said. Turning to social media, Babzani published a picture of herself on Facebook’s website. The photograph showed her as a hospital patient. Using a new program on Facebook, she asked her friends to help raise $350. It has always been easy for Facebook users to send birthday messages to friends online. Now people are using the social networking site to turn birthday messages into donations for a favorite cause, such as a charitable group. A year ago, the American company launched a new feature that has helped charities in the United States and around the world. In its first year, Facebook’s birthday fundraiser feature raised more than $300 million for groups helping those in need.