People fundraise money when in need. Whether it’s for charity, school events or for unfortunate circumstances, such as unexpected funeral costs. There was a time when raising money was time consuming and required large amounts of effort, but not anymore.
According to their website, “Launched in 2010, GoFundMe is the world’s largest social fundraising platform, with over $3 billion raised so far. With a community of more than 25 million donors, GoFundMe is changing the wway the world gives.”
The simple set-up process attracts many. Individuals are able to create their own page, share it with family and friends and then accept the donations by a check or bank transfer.
Also, anyone can make a GoFundMe page for any particular reason needed. Scrolling through Facebook, you may even see someone trying to raise money to buy a new car. Causes such as this is something individuals should be saving their earnings for.
The site states, “Most people use GoFundMe to raise money for themselves, a friend or loved one during life’s important moments. This includes things like medical expenses, education costs, volunteer programs, youth sports, funerals & memorials – even animals & pets.”
That’s the issue with GoFundMe. The main mission and purpose for people to fundraise on the site is appropriate, for actual causes to fundraise for. People all the time are making GoFundMe pages for personal reasons and almost abuse the purpose of the site itself.
It comes down to a matter of judgement of what people think is acceptable to have a page for. If the site implemented guidelines of what you can and cannot fundraise for, there would most likely be less people abusing the use of the fundraising website.
According to the GoFundMe site, “While it’s free to create and share your online fundraising campaign, GoFundMe will deduct a 5 [percent] fee from each donation that you receive. Since our fee is deducted automatically, you’ll never need to worry about being billed or owing us any money. A small processing fee of about 3 [percent] will also be deducted from each donation.”When people are being generous enough to donate to a cause, their whole donation isn’t actually going to the cause.
These fees are going to the operating expenses of the page. According to the GoFundMe site, the expenses include technology, infrastructure, payroll and benefits for their employees.
In turn, 5 percent of your donation is paying the individual’s salary working for the organization.
Though this online way of fundraising is simple, convenient and makes it possible for donors to do electronic transactions, doing fundraisers the old fashioned way would make it so all of the donation actually goes to the cause rather than getting fees deducted.
Emma Hamilton can be contacted at ehamilton@kscequinox.com
