Greedy greedy greedy. They don’t want to start a gofund me because of the percentage they take. They think they are so privileged that the money should go straight to their pockets. Newsflash, Gofund me is a platform that provides the need for people to ask for money online, of course they are going to take a percentage. I don’t know if I agree with it but that’s how businesses operate because it’s not free to run it. Gofund me has offered a lot of people financial relief in hard times.
GFM has its issues - usually in the way it's used - and they do take a percentage.
Thing is, though, that not only does that percentage pay for the service the site provides and its infrastructure, it's also part of the reason why GFM is a "safer" way to donate money.
Imagine a person, let's call him Schmasa, has a friend who has suffered a personal tragedy. Schmasa has a big social media following, and he decides to turn to his following to get help for his friend. He sets up a Venmo/Cashapp/etc account and posts about the tragedy, asking for anyone who wants to help to donate to the account. Hey, maybe thousands of dollars come in. Great! Schmasa can give that cash to his friend, or use it to buy gift cards to give to his friend.....or he could give a tenth of the cash to his friend and pocket the rest. No one but him would know. Donors wouldn't see how much total was donated. His friend wouldn't see how much was donated.
And if, a month later, one of Schmasa's subscribers checks in on the friend and says "I'm so glad I was able to donate $1000 to help you, a lot of us were worried & pitched in!" and Schmasa's friend is like .... wait, I only got $1000 total from him, what do you mean you donated $1000 and a bunch of other people donated too??
All that money is gone. Schmasa has it and there's no way for the donors to get it back. That's how Venmo and whatnot work - you transfer the money and it's gone. There's little to no oversight or protection.
With GFM there's a public display of how much total was donated in which amounts.
It's fairly easy to get fraudulent fundraisers shut down (example: someone pretending to be Lauren's nonexistent sister using her story & images to create a GFM), and money from fraudulent fundraisers is refunded to donors.
Donors can request a refund if they believe their donation isn't being used as the fundraiser claimed it would be - example: raising money to send cases of bottled water to the hurricane hit area, but instead the organizer takes a lavish vacation and no water is sent, or the recipient in a house fire situation never gets any money from the organizer.
GFM currently takes 2.9% + $.30 per donation - if someone donates $100, GFM keeps $3.20 ($2.90 plus $.30) and the recipient gets $96.80. I know not everyone will agree, but that seems like a reasonable fee for not only the convenience of easy fundraising, but also the protections the platform has in place like transparency and fraud prevention and the ability to get refunded.
When my younger kid first got sick & was in PICU for a month I took a massive financial hit - missed work, medical bills, travel, parking fees, a million things add up. Regular bills still need to be paid. My friends were desperate to help, so my best friend set up a Gofundme and people shared it in their circles and several thousand dollars were raised from both friends and strangers. The fees really aren't a huge deal; I was able to keep the lights on back home and the cell phones on and wipe out some of the medical bills until disability Medicaid took those over and survive for several months until things stabilized. I didn't give a single
duck about the 2.9% - people were able to donate easily from all over the world and with some protections on everyone's side.