Since 2010, GoFundMe crowdsourcing campaigns have raised $30 billion, the fundraising site revealed on Tuesday. This is because younger generations are increasingly making donations outside of traditional institutions.
According to Tim Cadogan, CEO of GoFundMe, 150 million people have used the website to send or receive money thus far. According to a 2021 analysis by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, younger donors and members of Gen Z and millennials, as well as single and less religious people are more inclined to use crowdfunding than traditional NGOs.
The fact that we’ve enabled people to band together to support one another on such a large scale makes us ecstatic, Cadogan said.
Laptops 1000Since its creation, the privately held for-profit company GoFundMe has disclosed the total amount of money received on its platform each year, but it hasn’t provided a breakdown of the money raised in any given year. However, from 2019, when it reported a total of $9 billion in cumulative gifts, it is conceivable to detect a notable increase.
GoFundMe’s acquisition of Classy, an online platform that makes giving to nonprofit organizations easier, in 2022 is one aspect of such expansion. The $30 billion total raised includes donations made through Classy.
In contrast, $499.3 billion in philanthropic contributions to nonprofit organizations were made in the United States in 2022.
Fundraising projects typically reach the personal networks of the individuals who launched them, according to Cadogan, and the most popular donation amount on GoFundMe is $50.
It’s a common misconception, according to Cadogan, that if you post a GoFundMe page, random individuals will just show up and start giving you money. That’s not the actual way it operates. You create a GoFundMe page and ask your friends and family for donations.
However, there are occasions when campaigns reach a far wider audience, with appeals centered on well-publicized occurrences like tragedies receiving a lot of support from total strangers. GoFundMe declared January 2, 2023, to be the “most generous day” on the website because of the donations made to Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s toy fundraising following his collapse on live television. According to GoFundMe, 210,000 donors from all around the world used their platform that day.
Laptops 1000“I believe the outpouring of support for Hamlin was a very significant collective expression of gratitude for him and the desire for people to say, ‘We’re with you,'” GoFundMe Chief Corporate Affairs Officer Margaret Richardson said.
In May, Hamlin declared that he would donate the over $9 million donated to the event to his charitable organization, the Chasing M’s Foundation.
Two days following the Uvalde, Texas, mass shooting, on May 26, 2022, was the day with the highest total amount of donations.
GoFundMe gathers verified fundraisers in a hub on their website, monitors campaigns linked to high-profile events, and takes action to validate them. In addition, Cadogan stated that the banks and payment processors that handle the money given through GoFundMe have procedures in place to identify fraudulent activity. The platform utilizes its vast database of gifts to identify what it refers to as anomalous campaigns.
“We and our banking partners have to know who you are if you’re moving money in any of the countries we operate in,” stated Cadogan.
Crowdfunding is nothing new in its most basic form, which involves collecting small gifts for a cause or to assist someone. However, Benjamin Soskis, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute’s Centre on Nonprofits and Philanthropy, noted that the rise in online giving through sites like GoFundMe is congruent with the use of online financial services generally, e-commerce growth, and social media adoption.
Giving to charitable organizations has not yet been fully replaced by crowdfunding, according to Soskis, in part because crowdfunding data is not as widely available. Nonprofit organizations are required to provide the IRS and the public with information about the grants they distribute and receive as well as donations they receive.
About GoFundMe, Soskis stated, “If it’s true that crowdfunding is becoming a larger part of total giving, I think that their data transparency needs to reflect that so that we can start to integrate crowdfunding into the larger analysis of charitable giving trends.”
To measure giving on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving in the United States, the corporation does share anonymized data with GivingTuesday. Initial projections for 2023 indicated a 10% decline in donations, a trend that should worry charity organizations. According to Giving USA, there will also be a drop in the total amount donated to NGOs in 2022.
In addition to GoFundMe, other platforms also enable online crowdfunding. Since 2000, DonorsChoose, an organization that enables instructors in public schools to raise money for classroom materials, claims to have raised $1.6 billion for teachers and students. Additionally, Meta said in 2022 that through Facebook and Instagram fundraisers, contributors had collected over $7 billion.
In addition to the possibility for public appeals for assistance to continue to gain traction, Cadogan sees room for development in online donations overall. That request, in his opinion, is the first step towards discovering other people’s kindness.
“Normalizing the act of asking for assistance is a significant aspect of what I hope to accomplish in the coming years,” he stated.
