As a site that looks at charitable causes and charitable giving, it’s interesting to see an article about Go Fund Me. We all know about Go Fund Me, the site where anyone can set up an account and ask for money for just about anything and anyone. How have they changed the face of fundraising? And who uses the site?
According to this article from CBS News, Go Fund Me says that “10,000 new campaigns are created every day – about one every eight seconds.” Over $9 billion dollars has been raised on the site, and a third of all pages are for medical expenses.
The Go Fund Me platform has a few very interesting pieces to it. First of all, “For years, GoFundMe collected five percent of every donation, plus three percent for credit card fees. But in 2017, CEO Solomon made a change that was both different and risky: Instead of taking a cut of every donation, GoFundMe now asks every donor for a voluntary tip. ” And this has actually worked.
In addition, you would assume that a lot of fraud would take place on the site. But they have many people working just to weed out fraud and have found that only 1/10th of 1% of their campaigns have misuse associated with them.
It’s certainly an interesting platform and the article is one worth reading.