GoFundMe reports $30B has been raised on site since 2010
NEW YORK — GoFundMe crowdfunding campaigns have generated $30 billion since 2010, the fundraising platform announced this week, as younger generations look beyond institutions to make their donations.
Tim Cadogan, GoFundMe’s CEO, said 150 million people have either sent or received money through the platform to date. Gen Z and millennial donors, as well as those who are not married and those who are less religious, are more likely to give through crowdfunding than to traditional nonprofits, according to a 2021 report by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. “That’s what we’re so thrilled about is that we’ve helped people come together to help each other at that level of scale,” Cadogan said.
GoFundMe, a privately held, for-profit company, has annually released the total amount raised on its crowdfunding platform since its founding, but it hasn’t published a breakdown of funds raised in an individual year. Nevertheless, it is possible to see significant growth from 2019, when it reported $9 billion in cumulative gifts.
Part of that growth includes GoFundMe’s acquisition in 2022 of Classy, an online platform that facilitates giving to nonprofit organizations. Donations via Classy are included in the reported $30 billion raised.
For comparison, charitable giving in the U.S. to nonprofit groups reached $499.3 billion in 2022.
The most common donation on GoFundMe is $50, Cadogan said, and, for the most part, fundraising campaigns reach the personal networks of the people who started them.
“Sometimes people think you put up a GoFundMe and a bunch of strangers just jump in and give you money,” he said. “That’s not how it really works . ... You put up a GoFundMe and you ask the people that you know to help you.”
Some campaigns capture a much broader audience, with requests around high-profile events, like disasters, garnering significant support from strangers. In 2023, GoFundMe said Jan. 2 was the “most generous day” on the platform as people donated to Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s fundraiser for toys after he collapsed on live TV during a game. GoFundMe said 210,000 people around the world donated that day.
Hamlin announced in May that he would transfer the more than $9 million given to the fundraiser to his nonprofit, the Chasing M’s Foundation.
The day with the largest number of donations in 2022 was May 26, two days after the mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
In response to highprofile events, GoFundMe monitors campaigns tied to the event, takes steps to verify them and collects authenticated fundraisers in a hub on their website. The platform also uses its extensive database of gifts to identify what it calls anomalous campaigns, and Cadogan said the payment processors and banks that handle the funds sent over GoFundMe also have processes to detect fraud.
“If you’re moving money in any of the countries we operate in, we and our banking partners have to know who you are,” Cadogan said.
In its most basic form, crowdfunding — for a cause or to help someone — isn’t new. But the rise of online giving via platforms coincides with the adoption of social media and the increase in ecommerce and the use of online financial services, said Benjamin Soskis, a senior research associate at the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute.
It’s not clear how much giving through a crowdfunding campaign has supplanted giving to nonprofit groups, Soskis said, in part because data about crowdfunding is less public. Nonprofit organizations have to share information with the IRS and the public about the grants they give and receive as well as donations they receive.
DonorsChoose, which allows public school teachers to raise funds for supplies, says it has raised $1.6 billion since 2000. And Meta said in 2022 that donors raised more than $7 billion via Facebook and Instagram.