Top GoFundMe campaigns show giving nature of Tennesseans

When Paul Garner received severe burns while trying to stop a man from setting himself afire outside a Memphis bar in May, a couple hundred donors gave over $8,600 for medical expenses.

In Nashville, over 13,000 people exceeded a $40,000 goal by contributing $425,000 for Christian music artist Nathan Johnson and his newborn daughter, Eilee Kate, when Johnson’s wife, Megan Johnson, died hours after giving birth in June.

And a March campaign by Adam McElhaney of Chattanooga, seeking to raise funds to buy the internet search history of congressmen, garnered more than $200,000 — well beyond the $10,000 goal.

The stories illustrate how Tennesseans showed their generosity — or, as in the Chattanooga case, their activism — in 2017 through GoFundMe campaigns, the method of today’s choice for helping one’s fellow man or making a point.

The global reach of GoFundMe and other online fundraising sites offers, in exchange for a fee, a broad platform to raise money for virtually any cause under the sun.

GoFundMe, which charges a flat 5 percent fee on donations, has issued its 2017 Year In Giving annual report, identifying the top Tennessee campaigns of the year. Tennesseans, or those initiating campaigns on behalf of Tennesseans, started 24,000 fundraising efforts through the site in 2017. Roughly 282,000 people in the state donated to at least one campaign, according to the report.

Fundraising professionals say online crowdfunding is a useful way to help worthy causes. At the same time, they caution that it can be especially easy in the online world to fall prey to scams, and a little healthy skepticism is therefore always useful before contributing.

“Coming from a nonprofit, there are all sorts of regulations we have to meet,” noted Nathan Tipton, development coordinator with Memphis-based

Meritan, a support agency for all ages. “So people do need to be aware of fraud potential.”

Still, Tipton says online crowdfunding is a great idea even if it has eaten into the pool of available contributions that go to traditional fundraising outlets.

“It’s easier for people to just go online and say, ‘OK, I have this need and I need a thousands bucks,’ ” he said. “It plays more on the

emotions, but that’s fine.”

Many of this year’s GoFundMe campaigns, like the one for Garner in Memphis, were considerably smaller in scope than the top campaigns. All, however, showed the power of an online platform for raising funds in a short time.

The Nashville campaign on behalf of Johnson and his daughter, dubbed the Team Johnson campaign, ranked as the state’s top campaign of the year. A total of 8,987 people contributed $425,556 in five months.

“Let’s raise enough money for Nathan to get off the road for at least six months,” Josh Wilson, a friend of Nathan Johnson and a fellow Christian artist, said on GoFundMe when starting the campaign in June. “Let’s cover his bills and meals so he doesn’t have to think about any of that. Let’s sleep over at his house and feed sweet Eilee so Nate can rest.”

After the initial $40,000 goal for Johnson was surpassed, the goal was raised repeatedly until it hit $400,000, only to be exceeded by the current $425,556. The campaign is still accepting donations.

“He wept when he heard,” Wilson told The Tennessean in June about Johnson’s reaction to the fundraising effort.

In Memphis, Garner received second- and third-degree burns on his legs after Jared McLemore set himself on fire outside Murphy’s, a Midtown bar on Madison, in May.