The popular crowdfunding site, GoFundMe, is well known for people raising money for surgeries, trips, or charities. Just on the front page of the site, the most popular fundraisers were all about helping other groups of people, whether it was a family struck by tragedy or an entire population needing help. The people who make these fundraisers want to help people in need, but a lot of the time, people don’t want their money to be handled by a third party organization because of lax monitoring and potential opportunity for fraud.
Third party organizations could improve their policies. The companies mean well and they do help a lot of people, but with a lack of strict guidelines about starting and holding fundraisers, it can lead to instances of fraud. GoFundMe’s guidelines are among those that are really simple, and when it comes to money, that’s not necessarily a good thing. Someone can make a fake fundraiser and just collect the funds for themselves. This doesn’t usually happen, but recently a couple did not donate the money they raised from their GoFundMe. The couple created a fundraiser for a homeless veteran in Philadelphia after the women’s car broke down and the vet helped her. The GoFundMe raised over $400K for homeless man to get back on his feet, but only $200K went to the man. The couple had to go to court over this, and the issue is still going on. Stuff like that, however, is very rare, since most people who decide to raise money, raise money for important charities and heartbreaking surgeries.
In the long run, GoFundMe is still a business. From every fundraiser that is held on the site, GoFundMe takes 2.9 percent of profits for transfering funds, and another 30 cents for each donation that is made with a credit or debit card. That doesn’t sound too bad until you realise that since it’s online, almost every donation will be with a card. Also, for example, many fundraisers have a goal of a million dollars. That’s a lot of money, but a lot of the time its needed for like surgery. 2.9 percent of one million is $344,827.59. This statistic may discourage people from donating in the first place.
Donating is such a noble action, especially if it’s to strangers that you don’t even know. GoFundMe provides an easy access to donating to strangers that need it. Most of the time it goes directly to the person who needs it, but on the rare occasion, it is just a fraud. GoFundMe needs some changes to its policy against fraud and maybe lower it’s processing percentage, but overall, it is most certainly an easy way to donate.
