A note from GoFundMe CEO, Tim Cadogan
Today, GoFundMe and Classy are announcing a record-setting milestone achieved by our community – $30 billion of help delivered. This is a testament to the tremendous impact that comes from people asking and offering help. The $30 billion represents more than 150 million people from all over the world coming together to help each other.
Most often, these are friends, relatives, neighbors and community members helping each other in response to specific needs. Supporting teachers, creating a community garden, rebuilding after a wildfire, enabling a friend to cover the costs of a medical procedure, getting more kids in sports, opening a new small business, enabling a global nonprofit to respond to an earthquake, honoring a friend who has passed away, supporting a nearby animal shelter, funding a leading research hospital, paying off kids’ lunch debt at the local middle school or supporting a study abroad trip – these are some of the many ways our global community has helped each other. In the US alone, over one third of all adults have donated using GoFundMe and Classy.
We join GoFundMe Hero and 2023 CNN Hero of the Year Dr. Kwane Stewart in his aspiration shared on his GoFundMe, “As we enter 2024, we carry on our hope for a brighter future with more kindness and shared humanity for all.”
Over a decade ago, GoFundMe and Classy were each founded with the idea that the right tools and technology could both help people help each other as individuals and help nonprofit organizations solve some of the world’s most urgent and complex problems. And together we have. People from nearly every country around the world have helped each other and supporters on GoFundMe and Classy have donated an average of $68 every second since 2010.
Giving Back
These donations inform our unique perspective on the causes our community cares about and fuels our inspiration to help even more. Since our founding we have invested more than $25 million into our community through programs including GivesBack and Pledge 1%. We also created and support the ongoing operation of GoFundMe’s independent nonprofit partner, GoFundMe.org. GoFundme.org has raised and distributed more than $160 million, making thousands of grants to charities and individual families facing critical needs. For example, GoFundMe.org started delivering cash grants to families in and around Lahaina following the devastating fire last August within 30 hours, and has sent over 4,200 grants to-date.
Looking Ahead
How do we enable the next $30 billion much faster? Our mission is simple. We exist to help people help each other – whether as individuals through GoFundMe or through the nonprofit organizations we support through our Classy software business. We’re focused on a hard problem: most people find it difficult to ask for help. But once you ask, it unlocks incredible things because people want to help. It’s one of the most positive things we do in our lives. Help, after all, is the love and care we have for one another in action.
So It’s our job to make it easier to ask for – and receive – help with technology, tools and most importantly, by earning our customers’ trust every day. That’s what we’ll be spending all our time working on this year and beyond.
Thank you to everyone who has stepped up, whether to ask or to support, and who have all demonstrated just what amazing things help can really do in the world.
Check out GoFundMe’s 2023 Year in Help. Look what help can do.
