GoFundMe Review

Pros

• World’s largest charitable crowdfunding site
• No platform fee
• Nonprofit crowdfunding is also available
• Can collect funds without meeting your funding goal

Cons

• Poor customer support
• Some campaigners have trouble withdrawing funds

What Is GoFundMe?

GoFundMe is the world’s largest charitable crowdfunding site. Best known as a crowdfunding platform for medical emergencies and other personal causes, GoFundMe can also be used to raise funds for business purposes. This GoFundMe review will explain how this is done.

Regarding GoFundMe fees, the company doesn’t charge a platform fee, setting it apart from sites like Kickstarter and Patreon. However, as with any fundraising site, ~3% of what you raise will still go to the payment processor.

Services Offered

GoFundMe provides a platform for users to solicit money from friends, family, social media followers, and anybody who might be moved to action by their campaign.

When you sign up with GoFundMe to set up a crowdfunding campaign, you can choose from a wide range of fundraising campaign types, one of which is business.

As long as you don’t violate GoFundMe’s campaign rules, you’re free to use GoFundMe to raise money. While the majority of GoFundMe campaigns have to do with need-based causes, businesses and entrepreneurs can use GoFundMe for crowdfunding as well.

Many examples of successful business-related campaigns can be found on GoFundMe’s site, from a San Francisco restaurant that raised $50K to get out of debt to a veteran who raised $2K to start a motorcycle repair shop. Considering the nature of GoFundMe, it helps to have a compelling story to tell (overcoming hardship, extenuating circumstances, and the like) when conducting business crowdfunding.

Business Qualifications

GoFundMe is deliberately permissive regarding the sorts of campaigns it supports. That said, it forbids campaigns that have anything to do with illegal activity, porn, hate speech, weapons, gambling, and the like. A full list of prohibited activity can be found in GoFundMe’s Terms Of Service.

GoFundMe Fees & Terms

Here are the terms and fees for GoFundMe’s crowdfunding campaigns:

GoFundMe’s payment processing fee — 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction — is a common online processing rate charged by numerous online payment processors.

As for crowdfunding terms, GoFundMe campaigns don’t prompt you to set a funding period. While you are prompted to set a funding goal, you’ll get to keep whatever you raise, no matter how much or how little that ends up being. You can keep your campaign active indefinitely and continue raising money even after you surpass your funding goal. There’s no limit to the amount of money you can raise, either.

GoFundMe pledges that, unlike other crowdfunding sites, it will not charge your donors anything besides the payment processing fee.

In place of a platform fee, GoFundMe offers a “tipping” option to all donation pages. These tips to GoFundMe are entirely voluntary — donors can choose “Other” in the tipping drop-down menu and enter $0 as the tip, and the donation will still go through.

Nonprofit Fundraising With GoFundMe

So far, the GoFundMe campaigns we’ve been discussing have been individual campaigns, which include everything from personal causes to business fundraisers. However, GoFundMe also hosts nonprofit crowdfunding campaigns, which are fundamentally different.

GoFundMe lets you set up a fundraising campaign for your certified nonprofit. Unlike donations to individual campaigns, contributions to nonprofit campaigns are processed through the PayPal Giving Fund, a 501(c)(3) public charity. Donors will get a tax-deductible receipt when they donate, and the Campaign Organizer doesn’t even have to touch the money.

This raises an important point that donors can miss: A donation to an ordinary GoFundMe campaign is not tax-deductible, as GoFundMe itself is not a nonprofit entity.

Application Process

Setting up a fundraising campaign with GoFundMe is simple and self-explanatory. You just enter the details of your campaign, your fundraising goal, and some basic personal information. Once you’ve done this, you can get your campaign live within minutes.

I like that you no longer have to sign up using a Facebook account in order to have your campaign publicly featured on GoFundMe’s website.

Sales & Advertising Transparency

Though some users have complained about the fees taken by GoFundMe or about having their campaigns removed from the site for violating the terms and conditions, GoFundMe’s site does disclose its rules for campaigns.

These rules could be displayed in a more accessible way, though — particularly the conditions a campaign must meet to qualify for receiving funds.

Customer Service & Technical Support

GoFundMe doesn’t list a phone number to call for immediate support, but it does provide a contact form for getting in touch with customer service. GoFundMe touts its five-minute support guarantee — the company promises to respond to your queries within five minutes, which is a faster response time than many rivals provide. Unfortunately, there is no live chat.

Beyond that, the site answers some basic questions about the service on its help pages, though you can only find a lot of pertinent information on GoFundMe’s terms page.

GoFundMe Reviews

How Does GoFundMe Compare To The Alternatives?

Kickstarter and Patreon are the two most prominent alternatives to GoFundMe for business funding. How do these two platforms differ?

Final Verdict: Is GoFundMe Right For Your Business?

While other crowdfunding platforms may offer a higher level of support than GoFundMe and a pool of backers more inclined to fund business projects, GoFundMe can be ideal for business crowdfunding if you can connect your business to a social cause or if you’ve overcome significant hardship (and are willing to talk about it).

GoFundMe’s lack of a platform fee is commendable, setting it apart from other crowdfunding sites. However, the issues some campaigners have with withdrawing their funds should also be taken into account. While most campaigners get their funds in a timely fashion, you may end up having to go back and forth with the company should a hiccup arise.

Crowdfunding is a good way to raise business capital when you don’t want to repay a loan. However, crowdfunding takes time and energy to conduct successfully. If you’re considering other ways to fund your business, today’s best business lenders offer loan products that are more accessible than those provided by the big banks.

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