
GoFundMe Tops Kickstarter as World’s #1 Crowdfunding Platform - billclerico
http://www.gofundme.com/2015/01/13/gofundme-tops-kickstarter-as-worlds-1-crowdfunding-platform/
======
johnkchow
I work in a crowdfunding startup where GoFundMe is our #1 competitor. We knew
they were dominating the personal causes space, but we didn't know they were
doing THIS well. I have much respect for their huge revenue/growth while
taking 0 VC money.

A huge part of their success is SEO/PR (which is just a huge positive feedback
loop). The product has great onboarding and they offer good customer support
(guaranteed 15 min or less response times, which is important when you're
dealing with people dealing with tragedies from natural events). While I agree
that the design is horrible, from a pure UX standpoint their site is extremely
simple to use. The typical user is someone who's not tech savvy, and they're
won't care if they raise thousands of dollars.

Also, let's get off our high tech horses here and stop blasting GFM. The
reason why a lot of people here on HN haven't heard of them is because we here
most likely are educated and have good jobs. We can afford for whatever shit
comes our way. Also, most donations come from personal networks i.e. friends
and family members, while larger campaigns get additional support from local
communities. Crowdfunding sites like Fundly and GFM really do affect people's
lives for the better.

------
bdcravens
The only GoFundMe campaign's I've truly been exposed to are scammy or digital
panhandling. I know real people are using it legitimately, but that's my
experience. I remember distinctly there being virtually nowhere to report
abuse, whereas on Kickstarter it's pretty easy.

~~~
CanSpice
I found a "how do I report a campaign I feel is fraudulent" FAQ within about
30 seconds. You can also contact their support team, and they say they'll get
back to you within five minutes.

It sounds like you might have tried this in the early days, it set an
impression, and haven't checked since.

~~~
bdcravens
I found the FAQ, but my experience was that _actually reporting_ something was
a bit of a circular journey. You shouldn't have to contact support; abuse
reporting should be a first class feature when the core business is people
soliciting money.

------
Gyonka
Am I wrong in saying that the user base if different? It seems to me that
kickstarter is more for products/businesses, but from my limited experience I
think gofundme is more of a humanitarian kind of crowdfunding.

~~~
duskwuff
Not at all! I feel like it's silly to compare the two sites at all.

The user base for GoFundMe is _completely_ different from Kickstarter --
they're aimed at personal fundraising (e.g, "medical expenses, education
costs, volunteer programs, youth sports, funerals & memorials" [1]), whereas
Kickstarter is aimed at "projects" with a "clear goal" and a tangible result.

The mechanics of the sites are also very different: Kickstarter projects run
for a fixed period, and release money to the project owner only if the project
has hit its goal at the end of that period, whereas GoFundMe campaigns can run
indefinitely, and give money to the project owner as soon as it's donated.
(GoFundMe campaigns can have "goal" dates and/or dollar values, but they
usually have no effect on how donations work.)

[1]: [http://www.gofundme.com/questions/](http://www.gofundme.com/questions/)
under "What can I raise money for?"

~~~
johnkchow
Additionally, Kickstarter has the concept of "tipping", which means that
contributions get refunded if projects don't reach their fundraising goal.
Sites like GFM have no such requirement (which makes sense when you'll take
every dollar you can b/c of a tragic event).

------
exhilaration
My advice: if anyone needs to run an online fundraiser for a charity cause
don't use GoFundme, they charge 7.9% + 30 cents. Use
[http://www.youcaring.com](http://www.youcaring.com) they charge 2.9% + 30
cents AND they show the transaction cost to your donors so they can opt to
give more to cover it.

~~~
johnkchow
If price is a concern, I recommend checking out Indiegogo Life
([https://life.indiegogo.com/](https://life.indiegogo.com/)). It's a pretty
stripped down product compared to the rest, but they only charge credit card
fees (total of ~3%).

[Note: I work in Fundly, a startup competitor to GFM]

~~~
rdi28
Thanks John, I work at Indiegogo and we launched Indiegogo Life in response to
the growing personal cause market. We're always focused on responding to our
users' needs, which is why we decided to remove our platform fees and simplify
our fundraiser creation process to less than 8 clicks on Indiegogo Life.

------
kentf
[https://www.tilt.com](https://www.tilt.com) is catching up fast.

\- Free for admins, lowest fees (2.5%) for contributors.

\- Focused on small, bite-sized group payments.

Business version: [https://open.tilt.com](https://open.tilt.com) \- Fully open
source \- Customizable

(Disclosure: It's one of my babies)

~~~
futuravenir
I ultimately found there was not enough promotion/marketing done on tilt's end
of things. It would have been nice to see a weekly tilt email of all the cool
things featured like indiegogo and kickstarter both do.

I love the customization, the price and the fact that open tilt is completely
open source. That's absolutely the reason why I went with you guys, I want to
support 100% open source. But at the end of the day, if I can't get enough
eyeballs seeing my project because nobody is scrolling through tilt projects
the way they scroll kickstarter projects, I'm going to lose out.

I'll happily take some of the blame for not launching a good enough campaign,
but I sure as heck could have used more support. Here was my campaign btw and
thanks for working to constantly improve your product.

[https://joatu.tilt.com/do-good-get-goods](https://joatu.tilt.com/do-good-get-
goods)

~~~
jjb123
We appreciate the feedback, and you'll start to see more and more cross
promotion of campaigns on the platform in coming months (especially for our
projects on the open source version Tilt/Open which has been powering some
really cool stuff lately). If you have any additional feedback, i'd love to
hear it - my email is james @ tilt.

Congrats to GoFundMe btw!

------
gyardley
Oddly-toned press release considering they serve completely different
audiences and markets - it's as if a product search engine started crowing
that they're bigger than a flight search engine. Yes, Kickstarter and GoFundMe
are both great crowdfunding businesses, but they're not really directly
comparable.

I wonder why GoFundMe felt they needed to release this - perhaps they've
decided to raise? Usually bootstrapped businesses keep their numbers to
themselves.

------
themodelplumber
I've seen lots of local causes run through GoFundMe. A friend's son
desperately needing dental work, a local family losing a mother or father and
needing help to pay medical expenses, and so on. I've found that some of the
accounts are pretty hard to read, perhaps because it is not easy to consider
the hardships that are occurring right in our neighborhood.

------
datashovel
Never been to that site, but after only a brief review the site kind of gives
me the creeps.

First I looked at "Popular Now", and alot of the specific campaigns looked
somewhat legitimate, then I looked at "Near Me" and after several pages of
campaigns noticed:

"85 - 96 of Thousands"

Granted the campaigns appearing seem to be coming primarily from 2 major
cities, but "Thousands"? People seem to be really catching on to this "blind
trust" and giving internet. Several were just outrageous, for example asking
for $25k, and in return providing only a fuzzy portrait photo, and 1 small
paragraph explanation.

Maybe it's just me, but IMO people asking for $25k for FREE should put a
little more effort into the campaign info page.

------
cordite
I've mostly seen GoFundMe used by individuals that are self-employed to other
individuals (such as selling art), but they have a calamity happen, like their
tablet or workstation breaking down. It's never 40K-100K USD stuff, mostly
under 5K.

------
woah
Huh, I would've thought that Kickstarter was way above and beyond, given the
amount of press they get. Perhaps it is because the things funded on
Kickstarter get a lot of press themselves.

~~~
electromagnetic
I'm sure kick starter would be far beyond this if they didn't only do the
transactions on fundraisers that succeed their goal.

------
tmuir
I would guess the general difference in expectation of outcomes help GoFundMe,
and hurt Kickstarter and IndieGogo.

Kickstarter has an extremely narrow market of early adopters of tech. They
also have developed a reputation of late shipping, or completely failed
projects. The more this continues, the less people will be inclined to
contribute. Even though failure SHOULD be expected, as these are nascent
businesses, it is not.

Contrast that with GoFundMe. Their market is anyone who is charitable. They're
not being sold on a product, they're being sold on someones
struggles/death/illness/etc. If you are interested in donating to something,
you don't question its chances of success. You aren't expecting anything in
return. You are spending money to help someone else, not yourself (ignoring
tax implications). In this case, if the donated amount fails to achieve the
stated goal, barring fraud, there probably won't be any backlash. Everyone
knows you can't cure diseases or other problems with money alone. Failure may
not necessarily be expected, but is definitely more acceptable than in
Kickstarter and Indiegogo's cases.

~~~
troymc
You're right in general. In fact, comparing Kickstarter and GoFundMe is a bit
odd, because they're not competitors.

Kickstarter is more than just pre-shipping tech products like the Oculus Rift.
In fact, they originally marketed it as a way for authors to pre-sell books,
musicians to pre-sell albums, etc. and there's still a lot of that.

------
billclerico
GoFundMe is an amazing story - 100% bootstrapped, based in San Diego, two
awesome founders. (full disclosure, they're one of our partners at WePay)

------
vproman
Curious to see some of the roots of GoFundMe? Check out Fanbox, previously
known as the startup SMS.ac. That's where the founders of GFM worked before
they moved on to their current, highly successful venture. I imagine that's
where the startup bug bit them and they learned the value of being the
middleman for transactions while leveraging social networks. SMS.ac was a
middleman for SMS billing and a social network, generating text messages that
were sent to users and receiving a share of the text charge from the cellular
carriers. I worked with them there, crazy but good times.

------
mastermojo
Whats gofundme's business model? Do they take a percentage of donations?

~~~
sami36
5%, just like Kickstarter

~~~
markdown
Someone else on here claims it's 7.9% + 30c

~~~
thejteam
That's 5% for them, 2.9% + 30c for CC processing.

------
exacube
5% is a little high (it would be much lower if gofundme and company were non-
profits), and i hate how high VISA/other CC fees are.

I hate that 8% of all donations are gone through the cracks for profiteering.

------
zaroth
I always wonder, why do we need these middle men?

~~~
mandlar
Easier to transfer money? Can use a CC/debit card, etc.? Don't even have to
leave home to donate or maybe the cause is further away (your hometown but you
live far away now).

------
iblaine
If Kickstarter is Google then GoFundMe is Bing. While GoFundMe may claim to be
better, none of my friends use it and I can't find any reason to use it
myself.

------
trhway
too bad South Park beat me to the Go Fund Yourself.

------
lukev
I automatically ignore any GoFundMe campaign, after they let the contributions
for Darren Wilson continue. Even when donors were making explicitly,
unambiguously racist comments along with their donation.

If they had a policy of making no judgement at all on their campaigns that
might be at least logically consistent, but given that they (by official
policy) shut down campaigns related to pro-choice fundraising, it is clear
that they have a systematic set of values which I do not share.

Given that a funding platform is explicitly designed to empower activist
groups, and that they clearly support a certain racist, conservative type of
group to a much higher degree, I believe it to be unethical to support them in
any way.

~~~
barney54
Are you saying that Darren Wilson was racist? Where is your evidence for that?

~~~
lukev
I don't know about Darren Wilson. My suspicions aren't relevant.

Here are some quotes from people who gave him money after the fact:

"Waste of good ammo"

"He did a great job removing an unnecessary thing from the public"

"Wake up white america"

"After 60 years of supporting the blacks I give up"

"One down many more to go"

And that's just a sampling from what was reported on news sites, since the
campaign itself was taken down (by the originators, not by GoFundMe itself.)

