GoFundMe

In 2008 Brad Damphousse, who was consulting with startups on product management and user experience, wanted to save for a vacation and found that setting up an online bank account for that purpose was harder than he had expected. He teamed up with Andrew Ballester (Andy Ballester in Tech.co’s report) to build a savings site, Coin Piggy. The site was meant to let users save through debit-card transactions and to match them with discounted items tied to their savings goals; because debit-card fees would have penalized saving, Coin Piggy never launched.⁠[1][2]

One Coin Piggy tool, “Request a Savings Gift,” looked promising, and in the same year the two launched CreateaFund, which helped individuals run personal fundraising campaigns, promote them on social media and collect contributions; Damphousse compared it to Evite, with users inviting the people in their lives to contribute toward a goal. PayPalPayPalPayPal Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: PYPL) is an American digital payments company that operates payment brands including PayPal, Venmo, Braintree, and Xoom, providing online and in-store payments, money transfers, and consumer credit to consumers and merchants worldwide.Open the full entry could not then split one payment between two parties, so the company could not take a small percentage of each fundraiser. The founders planned instead to charge small and medium-sized charities a subscription fee, but signing up charities proved difficult while free sign-ups from individuals kept growing. Looking back on that period, Damphousse said: “This is where we lost our way.”⁠[1]

In 2010 the founders went back to helping individuals raise funds and rebranded the product as GoFundMe; the company’s ten-year review dates the launch of GoFundMe.com to May 2010. Entrepreneur described it in 2013 as “San Diego-based GoFundMe.”⁠[1][3]

Months later PayPal improved its adaptive payment service so that a single transaction could be split between two parties, which allowed GoFundMe to charge a 5% fee on funds raised. Damphousse said that users who did not like the model or were not successful did not have to pay anything. The two also worked for a time on a separate idea for helping individuals promote their services; after about six months they decided to concentrate on GoFundMe, and Damphousse said: “we let the data do the talking.”⁠[1]

In April 2013 the platform received its millionth donation, and in October 2013 Saving Eliza became the first fundraiser on it to raise $1 million.⁠[3]

An article in Entrepreneur magazine in June 2013 stated that the platform had attracted 1.3 million donors since its 2010 launch, who had raised more than $83 million, including $10.5 million in May 2013 alone, and that payment volume had grown 500% in 2012. The company then employed 18 people, including the two founders. The article’s example was a campaign started by a woman in Minneapolis for a tornado victim in OklahomaOklahomaOklahoma is a U.S. state whose capital is Oklahoma City. It was admitted to the Union on November 16, 1907, as the 46th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 3,959,353.Open the full entry: the goal was $60,000, and $63,770 had been raised when the article appeared. Other uses of campaigns mentioned in the article were cancer treatment, college tuition and international adoptions.⁠[1]

In April 2015 the millionth fundraiser was started on the platform, and in May 2015 the total raised reached $1 billion.⁠[3]

In June 2015 the two founders agreed to sell a majority stake in the company to an investor group led by Accel PartnersAccelAccel is a venture capital firm co-founded in 1983 by Arthur Patterson and Jim Swartz. It invests through regional teams and early-stage, growth and late-stage funds, with operations in the United States, Europe, Israel and India. Its investment history includes Facebook, Flipkart, Atlassian, Slack and other technology businesses. Fundraising totals, regulatory assets under management and portfolio-company transaction values are distinct measures.Open the full entry and Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV), which also included Greylock Partners, ICONIQ Capital, Meritech Capital Partners and Stripes Group. The Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal is a U.S. news publication founded in 1889, with a focus on business, finance and economics. It is published by Dow Jones, part of News Corp.Open the full entry disclosed the sale on June 25, 2015, and put the company’s valuation near $600 million; the deal was expected to close within two weeks. Until then the company had taken no outside capital and had funded its growth from its own revenue; the Tech.co article puts its total revenue over its five years at roughly $60 million.⁠[2]

The founders stepped down from their day-to-day roles while keeping seats on the board. Rob Solomon, whom the Tech.co article calls a former CEO of Groupon, became chief executive; the new management also included David Hahn as president and CPO and Hoang Vuong as CFO and COO, and the new board members were John Locke, James Slavet and Woody Marshall. Solomon planned to open an office in Silicon Valley while leaving the founding team of 50 employees in San Diego intact. Solomon said: “I think we can become the giving layer of the internet.” He also said that nonprofits were a $300 billion-a-year industry in North America and that the goal was to remove friction from giving.⁠[2]

In a letter in 2020 Solomon wrote that when he joined in 2015 the platform had just reached $1 billion raised and was about to reach 15 million donations. In October 2015 the company hired its 100th employee. A TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry article in 2020 gave the valuation in the 2015 round as $500 million, which differs from the figure of nearly $600 million above.⁠[4][3][5]

In August 2016 the company opened its first international office, in Dublin, Ireland, and in October 2016 it introduced the GoFundMe Guarantee to protect donors and organizers.⁠[3]

In January 2017 GoFundMe acquired CrowdRise to extend its fundraising to charities; TechCrunch wrote on January 10, 2017, that the financial terms of the deal had not been disclosed. TechCrunch wrote that CrowdRise had been co-founded in 2009 by the actor Edward Norton, the producer Shauna Robertson and Robert and Jeffrey Wolfe and had raised around $25 million in funding; it had over 1 million members and 20,000 charities on the platform, with nonprofit campaigns raising over $500 million, and it had been used for fundraising events including the Boston Marathon, New York City Marathon, Chicago Marathon, Ironman and Tough Mudder and by organizations such as the American Cancer Society, the Red Cross, UNICEF and Free the Children.⁠[6][3]

TechCrunch wrote that GoFundMe had raised $3 billion since 2010 from more than 25 million donors across over 2 million campaigns. Its chief executive, Rob Solomon, said: “GoFundMe aims to be the giving layer of the Internet.” GoFundMe relaunched CrowdRise in March 2018.⁠[6][7]

In November 2017 GoFundMe eliminated its 5% platform fee for personal campaigns in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry and moved to voluntary tips from donors, who were offered a drop-down menu of preset percentages and an option to enter their own amount. Donations to U.S. personal campaigns still carried a 2.9% payment processing fee, and campaigns started by charities and all campaigns outside the United States continued to pay the 5% platform fee. Solomon said: “we will rely on voluntary tips from our donors.” The company would not say whether the arrangement was permanent or whether it would be extended outside the United States.⁠[8][3]

GoFundMe then had 50 million users and had raised more than $5 billion. A day earlier Facebook had cut its fees for campaigns run by organizations, while still charging personal campaigns between 6.9% and 8.8%. Before that the company had expanded into Europe and added video features to the platform. The TechCrunch article adds that when the service launched in Europe it charged 7.9% per donation plus $0.30 for processing.⁠[8]

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey stated that in November 2017 Katelyn McClure of Bordentown, New JerseyNew JerseyNew Jersey is a state in the eastern United States on the Atlantic Ocean, bordered by New York State, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, with the Hudson River forming its northeastern boundary and the Delaware River its western boundary; its capital is Trenton and its largest city is Newark. One of the original 13 colonies, it became the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution on December 18, 1787, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 9,288,994.Open the full entry, and Mark D’Amico created a GoFundMe page titled “Paying It Forward,” which said that McClure had run out of gas on Interstate 95 and that Johnny Bobbitt, a homeless veteran, had used his last $20 to buy gasoline for her; the page set a goal of $10,000 to get Bobbitt off the streets. Prosecutors said the story was false. The page raised about $400,000 from more than 14,000 donors in under three weeks, and most of the money was spent by the two on personal expenses over the following three months; in December 2017 they set up a bank account for Bobbitt and deposited $25,000 in it.⁠[9]

McClure pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and on July 21, 2022, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Noel L. Hillman to one year and one day in prison and three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $400,000 in restitution. D’Amico had pleaded guilty earlier and was sentenced in April 2022 to 27 months in prison. Bobbitt pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and on October 3, 2022, was sentenced by Hillman to three years of probation and ordered to pay $25,000 in restitution. The case was investigated by the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office, the Florence Township Police Department, IRS-Criminal Investigation and the FBIFederal Bureau of InvestigationThe Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the federal investigative agency of the U.S. Department of Justice. It grew out of a force of special agents organized by Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte in 1908, has used its present name since 1935 and is headquartered in Washington, D.C.Open the full entry’s Newark office.⁠[9][10]

In December 2018 GoFundMe said it had returned more than $400,000 to the campaign’s more than 14,000 donors. Its spokesman Bobby Whithorne said: “All donors who contributed to this GoFundMe campaign have been fully refunded.” The company also said it was cooperating with law enforcement and that misuse was rare, occurring in less than one-tenth of one percent of campaigns. Burlington County Prosecutor Scott Coffina had by then charged McClure, D’Amico and Bobbitt with second-degree felonies. In New Jersey state court D’Amico pleaded guilty in December 2019 and was later sentenced to five years in state prison, and McClure was sentenced in January 2023 to three years in state prison on state theft charges; both state terms run concurrently with the federal ones, and both were ordered to reimburse GoFundMe in full. Bobbitt received a probationary term in state court as well.⁠[11][12]

In April 2018 GoFundMe acquired YouCaring, a smaller rival; the terms were not disclosed. Existing YouCaring campaigns could continue or move to GoFundMe, all future campaigns were to be started on GoFundMe, and campaigns were to be backed by GoFundMe’s guarantee. Solomon said the combined community had more than 50 million people; the TechCrunch article put it at roughly 60 million donors across about 19 countries.⁠[7]

YouCaring’s chief executive, Dan Saper, said the company had never charged a platform fee; the article described it as profitable on a tips-based model, with more than 70% of its users tipping. YouCaring had hosted JJ Watt’s Hurricane Harvey relief fund, which raised $37 million and was then the largest crowdfunding campaign on any platform. In January 2018 YouCaring had acquired Generosity.com from Indiegogo, and its only disclosed backer was Alpine Investors. GoFundMe had never disclosed how much funding it had raised; the article listed its backers as ICONIQ, Stripes Group, Accel, TCV, Greylock and Meritech.⁠[7]

By December 2018 GoFundMe, then eight years old, had raised more than $5 billion. Its report for 2018 found that 61% of that year’s donors were giving on the platform for the first time. The largest campaign of the year, the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, had raised more than $22 million, making it the largest GoFundMe campaign up to that time, and was still active when the report appeared.⁠[13]

Other large campaigns included the Humboldt Broncos Memorial Fund, set up after a bus crash in Canada in April that killed 16 people, which received 141,984 donations from more than 80 countries totaling over 15 million Canadian dollars (about $11.2 million); the Stoneman Douglas Victims’ Fund after the Parkland shooting, which raised $10 million from more than 26,000 people; more than 60 drives for the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., plus dozens of local fundraisers, which together raised over $3.5 million; a campaign with the charity Love Army for houses for Rohingya refugees, which raised $2.1 million; a campaign for victims at the Tree of Life synagogue, which raised over $1.2 million; more than 9,000 drives related to the CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry wildfires, which raised nearly $30 million; and the #BlackPantherChallenge, which Frederick Joseph began so that children in Harlem, New York, could see the film and which grew into more than 600 drives raising nearly $1 million. Per capita, the most generous states in 2018 were, in order, AlaskaAlaskaAlaska is the largest U.S. state by area and borders Canada to the east; its capital is Juneau and its largest city is Anchorage. Alaska was admitted to the Union on January 3, 1959, as the 49th state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 733,391.Open the full entry, MassachusettsMassachusettsMassachusetts (officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts) is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States; its capital and largest city is Boston. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on February 6, 1788, the sixth state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 7,029,917.Open the full entry, ColoradoColoradoColorado is a U.S. state classified as one of the Mountain states, with Denver as its capital. It was admitted to the Union on August 1, 1876, as the 38th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 5,773,714.Open the full entry, Washington StateWashington (state)Washington is a state on the Pacific coast of the northwestern United States; its capital is Olympia and its largest city is Seattle. Washington was admitted to the Union on November 11, 1889, as the 42nd state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 7,705,281 residents.Open the full entry, VermontVermontVermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States; its capital is Montpelier and its largest city is Burlington. It joined the Union on March 4, 1791, as the 14th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 643,077.Open the full entry, California, New HampshireNew HampshireNew Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by Quebec, Canada, to the north, Vermont across the Connecticut River to the west, Massachusetts to the south, and Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east; its capital is Concord. One of the original 13 colonies, it became the ninth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution on June 21, 1788, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 1,377,529.Open the full entry, ConnecticutConnecticutConnecticut is a U.S. state in the New England region. Its capital is Hartford and its largest city is Bridgeport (2010 census). It entered the Union on January 9, 1788, as the 5th state, and had a population of 3,605,944 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, New Jersey and OregonOregonOregon (officially the State of Oregon) is a state on the Pacific coast of the western United States; its capital is Salem and its largest city is Portland. It was admitted to the Union on February 14, 1859, as the 33rd state. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 4,237,256.Open the full entry. Per capita, the most generous cities in 2018 were, in order, Steamboat Springs, Colorado; Washington, D.C.; Redding, California; Tallahassee, FloridaFloridaFlorida is a U.S. state occupying mainly the Florida peninsula, with its capital at Tallahassee; its most populous city is Jacksonville. It entered the Union on March 3, 1845, as the 27th state, and had a population of 21,538,187 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry; Midland, TexasTexasTexas is a U.S. state in the south-central United States, with its capital at Austin and its largest city Houston. It was admitted to the Union on December 29, 1845, as the 28th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 29,145,505 residents.Open the full entry; Tucson, ArizonaArizonaArizona is a state in the southwestern United States; its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona was admitted to the Union on February 14, 1912, as the 48th state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 7,151,502.Open the full entry; Bend, Oregon; Gainesville, Florida; Las Vegas; and Lincoln, NebraskaNebraskaNebraska is a state of the United States bordered by South Dakota to the north, Iowa and Missouri to the east, Kansas to the south, and Colorado to the southwest, with its panhandle bordering Wyoming to the west; its capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha. It was admitted to the Union on March 1, 1867, as the 37th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 1,961,504.Open the full entry.⁠[13]

On December 16, 2018, Brian Kolfage, an Iraq War and Air Force veteran and triple amputee, started a GoFundMe campaign with a goal of $1 billion to build a wall on the southern border of the United States, during a standoff between President Donald TrumpDonald TrumpDonald Trump (born 1946) is an American politician and businessman, a Republican who ran the real estate company the Trump Organization and starred in the television series The Apprentice. He served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021 and has been the 47th president since 2025.Open the full entry and Congress over funding for the wall. Kolfage originally promised that the money would go to the U.S. government. By early on January 12, 2019, the campaign had raised $20,328,658 from more than 340,000 donors in 26 days.⁠[14]

On January 11, 2019, Kolfage said the donations would instead go to a nonprofit he had created, We Build the Wall, Inc., whose advisory board included Erik PrinceErik PrinceErik Prince (Erik D. Prince, born 1969) is an American entrepreneur, private investor and former U.S. Navy SEAL officer. He founded Blackwater USA in 1997 and bought Presidential Airways in 2003, sold both businesses in 2010, and later founded the private equity firm Frontier Resource Group.Open the full entry and Kris Kobach. GoFundMe held that the change in where the donations would go violated its rules; the campaign page had said that every donation would be refunded if the goal was not reached or closely approached. A GoFundMe spokesman, Bobby Whithorne, said all donors would receive a refund unless they actively chose to redirect their donation to the new organization.⁠[14]

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York stated on April 26, 2023, that the online fundraising, which began in approximately December 2018, became the “We Build The Wall” campaign and raised more than $25 million; Kolfage had publicly promised that he would “not take a penny in salary or compensation” but covertly took more than $350,000 of donor funds for his personal use. He pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and to tax and wire fraud charges brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Florida, and Judge Analisa Torres sentenced him to 51 months in prison and three years of supervised release and ordered him to forfeit $17,872,106 and pay $2,877,414 in restitution.⁠[15]

An article TIMETIMETIME is an American newsmagazine and media brand founded by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, which published its first issue on March 3, 1923; it is headquartered in New York and known for its Person of the Year selection and the TIME100 list. Since 2018 it has been personally owned by Marc and Lynne Benioff; its current Chief Executive Officer is Jessica Sibley, and its Editor-in-Chief is Sam Jacobs.Open the full entry published on January 30, 2019, states that Solomon said in an interview with CBS NewsCBS NewsCBS News is the news organization of the U.S. CBS system, part of Paramount, providing news coverage through television, the web and streaming. Its history extends from radio newsgathering to television and digital platforms; its signature programs include CBS Evening News, 60 Minutes and Face the Nation, and CBS News 24/7 is its streaming news service.Open the full entry that one-third of all donations on GoFundMe went toward health care costs. He said: “When we started in 2010, it wasn’t purposefully set up and built to be a substitute for medical insurance,” and added: “We weren’t ever set up to be a health care company and we still are not.” GoFundMe’s website then stated that nearly 250,000 campaigns had been set up through the site to help pay for health care costs, raising $650 million in contributions. He also said: “While we didn’t set out to be one of the most influential health care companies in the world, if we have to serve that purpose, I feel very proud about that.” The article adds that workers furloughed during the recent government shutdown had turned to GoFundMe to help pay medical expenses.⁠[16]

In April 2019 the company launched GoFundMe.org, which its ten-year review calls “the advocacy and charitable arm of GoFundMe.” The GoFundMe.org website dates its own work and that of its partners from 2017.⁠[3][17]

In October 2019 GoFundMe launched GoFundMe Charity, a fundraising platform for nonprofits built on its acquisition of CrowdRise, which let nonprofits keep building campaigns on GoFundMe and, for the first time, collect GoFundMe-powered donations away from GoFundMe’s own site; Solomon said thousands of charities had signed up. In the preceding years the platform had also added team fundraising.⁠[5][18]

On January 29, 2020, GoFundMe announced that Rob Solomon, chief executive for five years, would step down and become chairman, and that Tim Cadogan, chief executive of the programmatic advertising platform OpenX, would succeed him effective March 2; Cadogan was to leave OpenX on February 14 and be succeeded there by its president, John Gentry. Cadogan had worked with Solomon at YahooYahooYahoo is an internet brand founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in 1994, with email, search, news, finance, sports, and advertising businesses. It developed from a web directory into a portal, underwent major acquisitions and security incidents, and sold its operating business in 2017, when the original listed company became Altaba. Apollo-managed funds acquired the brand’s operating business in 2021. Yahoo launched the AI answer service Scout in 2026.Open the full entry many years earlier.⁠[5][4]

The platform had by then raised more than $9 billion from more than 120 million donations and was available in 20 countries. In his letter Solomon called GoFundMe “the Internet’s take action button” and set a long-term goal of one billion donations. He estimated that GoFundMe held about an 80% share of peer-to-peer fundraising in its home market and close to that in others and said the company had been profitable since its earliest days; an initial public offering, mergers and acquisitions or a private equity deal remained long-term options, but there were no plans for any of them for a number of years. The letter also states that charitable organizations worldwide raise more than $500 billion a year, nearly all of it offline.⁠[4][5]

On March 20, 2020, Cadogan wrote that more than 22,000 fundraisers related to COVID-19 had been created on the platform in the preceding weeks and had raised over $40 million. The company committed $1.5 million to support affected communities and front-line organizations, launched the tax-deductible COVID-19 General Relief Fund and created a central hub of verified COVID-19 fundraisers. Its global workforce had moved to working from home about two weeks earlier. Contractors and dedicated service workers kept full pay and benefits while working remotely.⁠[19]

The company’s report for 2020 states that it launched the Small Business Relief Initiative in March; in the six months from March 1 to August 31, 2020, more than 9 million donations raised over $625 million for COVID-19 relief through more than 150,000 fundraisers, and about 60% of the COVID-19 fundraisers started in the United States supported small businesses and their employees. In April America’s Food Fund became the largest GoFundMe fundraiser of all time, raising over $44 million from more than 40,000 donations from 77 countries.⁠[3][20]

June 2, 2020, saw more donations than any other day in GoFundMe’s history. The Official George Floyd Memorial Fund drew more than 500,000 donors, the most donations of any fundraiser on the platform; the company’s report puts the amount raised at $14.7 million and TIME at nearly $15 million. Other large fundraisers that year were the Frontline Responders Fund (over $8.2 million), Justice for Breonna Taylor ($6.7 million) and the Navajo & Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund (over $6.5 million). The Justice & Equality Fund, started in early June, raised over $1 million, and in October the company launched five GoFundMe Causes.⁠[3][20]

The report states that over ten years the platform had received more than 150 million donations and more than 65 million comments of support and that more than 110,000 charities had benefited; that about 70% of donations in 2020 were under $50 and nearly one in three donors gave more than once; and that the most generous countries that year by donations per capita were, in order, Ireland, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Italy, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Denmark.⁠[3]

Other figures in the report: the most prolific organizer had started 379 fundraisers and the most frequent donor had given more than 1,200 times; in January 2020 donors from more than 130 countries gave to help koalas affected by the Australian bushfires; a partnership with the PGA TOUR in May raised over $5 million; the Frontline Responders Fund paid for 47 million units of personal protective equipment and relief supplies shipped to more than 230 cities on five continents; the fundraiser for Breonna Taylor received more than 210,000 donations; the Navajo & Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund helped 48,000 households; and in the six months after George Floyd’s death about 3 million donations went to Justice & Equality fundraisers, $20 being the most common amount. By donations per capita the most generous U.S. states in 2020 were, in order, Massachusetts, New York StateNew York (state)New York is a state in the eastern United States; its capital is Albany and its largest city is New York City. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on July 26, 1788, becoming the 11th state to join the Union, and its population in the 2020 census was 20,201,249.Open the full entry, Oregon, Washington State, Vermont, Connecticut, California, Rhode IslandRhode IslandRhode Island (officially the State of Rhode Island) is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Ocean; its capital and largest city is Providence. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on May 29, 1790, the last of the original 13 to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 1,097,379.Open the full entry, Colorado and MinnesotaMinnesotaMinnesota is a state in the north-central United States and the most northerly of the 48 contiguous states; its capital is St. Paul and its largest city is Minneapolis. It was admitted to the Union on May 11, 1858, as the 32nd state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 5,706,494.Open the full entry.⁠[3]

The report also lists the most generous cities of 2020. In the United States they were, in order, Silver Spring, MarylandMarylandMaryland is a Middle Atlantic state of the United States, deeply indented by Chesapeake Bay and bordered by Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, the District of Columbia and West Virginia; its capital is Annapolis and its largest city is Baltimore. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on April 28, 1788, as the seventh state to do so, and had a population of 6,177,224 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry; Spring, Texas; Marietta, Georgia; Alpharetta, Georgia; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Alexandria, VirginiaVirginiaVirginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state whose capital is Richmond. It entered the Union on June 25, 1788, as the 10th state, and had a population of 8,631,393 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry; Berkeley, California; Evanston, IllinoisIllinoisIllinois is a state of the United States that borders Lake Michigan and the states of Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Iowa; its capital is Springfield and its largest city is Chicago. It was admitted to the Union on December 3, 1818, as the 21st state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 12,812,508.Open the full entry; Somerville, Massachusetts; and Rockville, Maryland. In Australia the top five were Bundaberg, Wagga Wagga, Mackay, Mandurah and Launceston; Australians donated more than 20,000 times on January 6, the most popular day to donate that year; the most prolific organizer started 26 fundraisers and the most prolific donor gave 202 times to 176 fundraisers. In Canada the top five were Victoria, Kelowna, Kingston, Saskatoon and Calgary; Canadians donated more than 30,000 times on June 2; the most prolific organizer started 27 fundraisers and the most prolific donor gave 201 times to 163 fundraisers. In the United Kingdom the top five were Derry/Londonderry, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Bath and Luton; more than 55,000 donations were made on June 2; the most prolific organizer started 33 fundraisers and the most prolific donor gave 145 times to 139 fundraisers. In Ireland the top five were Galway, Dublin, Limerick, Cork and Waterford; more than 25,000 donations were made on April 21; the most prolific organizer started 15 fundraisers and the most prolific donor gave 97 times to 94 fundraisers.⁠[3]

A company profile published by TIME on April 27, 2021, states that Cadogan had repeatedly said he would rather governments, not his company, provide a social safety net.⁠[20]

On January 13, 2022, GoFundMe announced that on January 6 it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Classy, a nonprofit fundraising software company, in an all-equity deal expected to close in the first quarter of 2022, subject to regulatory approvals. Classy is a B Corp Certified Public Benefit Corporation based in San Diego that has served nonprofits since 2011; nonprofits raised $1.1 billion on Classy in 2021 and nearly $4 billion all-time. Under the agreement Classy was to become a subsidiary of GoFundMe, the two companies were to continue to operate as separate entities, and Classy’s chief executive, Christopher Himes, was to report to Cadogan. Goldman SachsGoldman SachsGoldman Sachs is an American financial services group headquartered in New York whose businesses include investment banking, securities trading, asset management, and wealth management. It traces its origins to the commercial paper business Marcus Goldman founded in 1869; it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1999 under the ticker GS and became a bank holding company in 2008. David Solomon serves as chairman and chief executive officer.Open the full entry & Co. LLC was GoFundMe’s exclusive financial adviser and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & RosatiWilson Sonsini Goodrich & RosatiWilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (known as Wilson Sonsini) is a law firm headquartered in Palo Alto, California, founded in 1961 and known for serving technology, life sciences, and other growth companies and their investors; it served as counsel on the initial public offerings of companies including Apple, Netscape, Google, and Tesla. As of December 2025 the firm had more than 1,000 lawyers, and its 2025 revenue was $1.4 billion.Open the full entry its legal adviser. The announcement notes that Classy hosts the Collaborative conference and the Classy Awards.⁠[21]

The announcement states that GoFundMe had raised more than $15 billion from over 200 million donations since 2010 and that the two platforms together had raised more than $20 billion, $5 billion of it in 2021. It also notes that the company had hired Juan Benitez as president and chief technology officer and Musa Tariq as chief marketing officer and had added three directors: Sharda Caro Del Castillo, Jonathan Mildenhall and Scott Wagner. The announcement puts the U.S. philanthropic market at nearly $500 billion.⁠[21]

Himes said: “We want to leverage GoFundMe as a channel for donor acquisition.” The Chronicle of Philanthropy wrote that the long-term plan was to show donors to individual campaigns the organizations that tackle the root causes of problems, for example pointing someone who gives to a campaign for a leukemia patient’s medical bills to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.⁠[18]

GoFundMe’s president, Juan Benitez, and its general counsel, Kim Wilford, appeared before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security of the House of Commons of Canada on March 3, 2022. Benitez testified that the “freedom convoy” fundraiser was created on January 14, 2022, that the company began monitoring it the next day and that its initial analysis found the fundraiser to be within its terms of service. On January 27 the company processed a withdrawal of 1 million Canadian dollars to the organizer’s financial institution; because the organizer’s public statements shifted after the withdrawal, the company suspended the fundraiser on February 2, pausing donations and withdrawals.⁠[22][23]

By February 3 the fundraiser had raised more than 10.1 million Canadian dollars from more than 120,000 donors; GoFundMe said at the time that it had paused the campaign because of unanswered questions about how the organizers planned to use the money. That day the House of Commons public safety and national security committee voted unanimously to invite GoFundMe to testify, on a motion by the New Democratic Party MP Alistair MacGregor; the committee wanted to know how the company keeps funds from being used to promote extremism and hate and how it limits anonymous donations and foreign money. An analysis by CBC News found that at least a third of the donors were anonymous or used invented names. The Liberal MP Taleeb Noormohamed proposed an amendment to invite the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) as well. Keith Wilson, a lawyer with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, said the protest had taken steps to incorporate and set up bank accounts and that its lawyers and accountants were developing a process to reimburse participants once GoFundMe released the remaining funds.⁠[23]

On February 4 GoFundMe removed the fundraiser from its platform. The reasons Benitez gave in his testimony were concerning dialogue with the organizer and her team, continued updates from local authorities about escalating violence and disruption, and accounts between February 2 and 4 of violence and threatening behaviour by people associated with the movement. The company first gave donors the option of requesting a refund or having their donations sent to charities chosen by the organizer and verified by GoFundMe; as of February 5 its payment processing partner initiated refunds of all donations, including transaction fees and tips.⁠[22]

Benitez said the company’s records showed that 88% of the donated funds and 86% of the donors came from Canada, that the company had not been contacted by the Government of Canada, and that the local officials it had worked with were Ottawa’s interim police chief, Bell, and its mayor, Watson. He also said GoFundMe had delivered over $17 billion in assistance to communities in 19 countries and was delivering well over $200 million a year in Canada.⁠[22]

On October 26, 2022, Cadogan announced in a message to employees that 94 people, about 12% of the company, were being laid off. He said donations had declined as rising inflation squeezed people’s budgets and that some of the company’s efforts to encourage more people to give had not succeeded as expected, so it was scaling back longer-term investments and concentrating on its core business. Affected employees in the United States received at least 13 weeks of pay (more for those with over three years at the company), an extension of the stock option exercise window from three months to three years, and COBRA health premiums paid through April 30, 2023. He wrote: “This is the hardest decision I have had to make in my time at GoFundMe.” Employees who had not reached their one-year vesting cliff received pro-rated vesting; departing employees could keep their laptops, kept access to Modern Health and Calm and were offered career counseling through Randstad RiseSmart; packages outside the United States varied by country in line with local law.⁠[24]

The company’s review of 2023 states that more than 30 million people gave or received help on GoFundMe that year, that 39 million donations were made, that more than $106 million was raised for natural disaster relief, that more than 2 million fundraisers were started by first-time organizers and that $50 was the most commonly donated amount; GoFundMe.org granted more than $13.5 million to individuals and nonprofits. Product changes that year included a redesigned fundraiser management dashboard, Venmo as a payment method and an option to record a video to tell a fundraiser’s story. In the United States, fundraisers for school lunch debt increased 4.5 times. More than 94,000 fundraisers supported businesses and more than 240,000 supported animal-related causes, and donors were sent over 19 million thank-you notes; in the United States fundraisers related to student loan debt rose 40% in October compared with a year earlier, and senior care fundraisers rose nearly 10% year over year.⁠[25]

On May 6, 2025, GoFundMe announced that it had surpassed $40 billion raised globally and launched GoFundMe Pro for nonprofits, combining GoFundMe’s scale and data with Classy’s nonprofit software; the Classy brand was to be retired. The company said nearly 200 million people and organizations had taken part over 15 years and that its AI-powered fundraising features had been used more than 35 million times. Cadogan said: “We exist to help people help each other.” The company also said its impact-sharing technology had directly inspired more than 18 million donations in the past year; Cadogan said charitable giving in the United States had stayed near 2% of gross domestic product for fifty years and that the company believed this should change.⁠[26]

GoFundMe Pro creates nonprofit pages for 501(c)(3) organizations; an organization that verifies its identity can claim its page and see all the fundraising campaigns created for it and the contact information of the people who raised money for it or donated to it, and subscribers to GoFundMe Pro software get unified payments, with the information from GoFundMe Pro and from the consumer platform coming into one dashboard. Cadogan said 65,000 nonprofits had already benefited from people organizing and giving to them on GoFundMe. Woodrow Rosenbaum, chief data officer of GivingTuesday, said supporters of GoFundMe campaigns are more likely, not less, to give to charity.⁠[27]

On June 30, 2025, GoFundMe launched Giving Funds, built on donor-advised fund technology: users can plan, invest, grow and manage their charitable giving in one place and receive one annual tax receipt, with no management fees, no minimum balance and donations from as little as $5, and anyone in the United States can open a fund for free. The product was launched with GoFundMe Giving Fund, an independent 501(c)(3) public charity and donor-advised fund sponsor that is a separate and independent entity from GoFundMe, Inc., which provides it with administrative, technical and operational services. The announcement states that donor-advised funds hold more than $250 billion donated for charitable purposes, that the vast majority of it goes undistributed each year and that fewer than 1% of Americans use such funds; more than 65,000 nonprofits had received donations on GoFundMe in the previous year.⁠[28]

GoFundMe had created 1.4 million nonprofit pages for charities worldwide. In October 2025 nonprofits said they had not known their pages existed and objected to the unauthorized listing of their information and to the difficulty of removing the pages; one organization’s page showed its IRS employer identification number. Joni Smith, president of the American Literacy Corporation, said her page was still up a week after she had been informed it would be removed; after ABC7 made a request, GoFundMe offered to help her remove it. Dave Dornlas, president of another nonprofit, said: “I’m a believer in opt in ... not opt out.”⁠[29]

After about a week of criticism GoFundMe changed course: only nonprofits that opt in and complete verification would have a public, searchable page; unclaimed pages would be removed and de-indexed from search engines, with search engine optimization off by default; and the company would keep basic nonprofit directory listings so that organizations could be found and fundraisers created for them. Cadogan said in a statement: “We are very sorry for this and take responsibility for missing the mark”; the statement was also posted on LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry.⁠[30][29]

Diane Yentel, chief executive of the National Council of Nonprofits, praised the changes and the speed of the correction. Otis Fulton of Turnkey said harmed parties want an apology that accepts responsibility; Alex Szebenyi, co-founder of Acquaint, said he was glad to see GoFundMe moving to an opt-in model that respects nonprofits’ consent; and Mark Dobosz of Mozaic Senior Life, who had earlier objected to the extra work of claiming and removing pages, said after the change: “It is a welcome sign and action that they are admitting the error of their ways.” GoFundMe expected de-indexing to happen within a few days, while George Weiner, founder of Whole Whale, said it could take two to four weeks or longer for pages to disappear from search results. Organizations that had started claiming a page could remove it from their dashboard once the claim was complete, and those wanting to stop the claim and remove the page were to contact GoFundMe support.⁠[30]

GoFundMe said donations made to unclaimed pages still go to the nonprofit concerned, through PayPal Giving Fund or other payment processors, and that it earns no interest on them.⁠[29]

The report states that nearly 80 million donations were made on the platform in 2025, an average of 2.5 per second, of which more than 47 million went to individual fundraisers and 32 million to nonprofits; that $330 million was raised for natural disaster relief; that more than 155,000 people started a fundraiser for a nonprofit, nearly half of them for the first time; and that the platform operates in 20 countries. By donors per capita Ireland topped the list for the seventh straight year, followed by the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Italy. The report adds that the platform has supported more than 166,000 nonprofits since 2010. Other figures in the report: fundraisers were shared more than 72 million times; more than 95,000 people turned to GoFundMe to start a business of their own; fundraisers for volunteering tripled; more than 95,000 donors supported young athletes; school supply fundraising rose more than 50% and fundraising for essential expenses rose 20%; more than 80,000 organizers ran social challenges for nonprofits, with participants signing up to run, walk, cycle and swim more than 6 million miles; and AI tools had been used more than 70 million times to date. Charity was the fastest-growing category, followed by Monthly Bills and Faith, and food banks had more fundraisers than any other community cause. The report also mentions Giving Funds, the donor-advised fund product the company launched in 2025.⁠[31]

On March 12, 2026, GoFundMe introduced the Smart Fundraising Coach in the United States, an AI-powered assistant that helps users write titles and stories, set goals and generate content ready for social media and that sends reminders by SMS and email recommending next steps. The company expected the coach to bring in an additional $125 million raised in the United States that year and said its AI tools had been used more than 80 million times, with a cross-functional AI governance committee overseeing the work. The announcement also notes that GoFundMe was named to TIME’s 100 Most Influential Companies of 2025. The company’s research showed that fundraisers created with the coach performed better early on in funds raised, early donations and engagement, and in a survey of early users 65% to 75% said it made them feel less stressed, less alone and more confident. The announcement also states that Intelligent Ask Amounts helps nonprofits set personalized ask amounts for specific goals, that GoFundMe Pro had added peer-to-peer fundraisers for nonprofits and that more than 80,000 nonprofit challenges had been launched on GoFundMe in the previous year.⁠[32]

In October 2026 GoFundMe released a report, “The Kindness Gap,” based on more than 34 million nonprofit donations from 8.6 million donors, totaling $2.7 billion, from July 2025 through June 2026. Compared with the previous twelve months, fundraisers created for nonprofits rose 62%, nonprofit donors rose nearly 10% and organizers rose 28%; challenge fundraisers rose 306%. Steve Froehlich, the chief customer growth officer, said: “What stands out is that people are doing more than giving.” Other findings: first-time organizers rose 30% and donors to challenge fundraisers rose 419%; an average peer-to-peer campaign brought in 123 donors new to that cause; of donors new to nonprofit giving on GoFundMe Pro, 16% made another nonprofit gift within the year and 10% became organizers; and Instagram and Facebook together accounted for nearly 80% of first-time gifts coming from organic social channels. Among the page experiments the report records, hiding goal progress in August 2025 lowered the conversion to completed gifts even though clicks on the donate button rose; hiding recent donation activity likewise reduced conversion and total giving; cutting the donation grid from six suggested amounts to four in September 2025 lowered conversion and donation volume; highlighting a personalized suggested amount between November 2024 and January 2025 raised conversion and donation volume; and campaigns using Intelligent Ask Amounts optimized for revenue raised 7% more on average.⁠[33]

On October 28, 2026, the company announced that Stephanie Parks had joined as chief compliance officer, leading its global compliance strategy across regulatory compliance, financial crime prevention and governance. She had most recently been chief compliance officer of Fiserv, had earlier held compliance roles at First Data and Citi and had spent five years in the nonprofit sector managing USAID-funded economic policy and risk work, including work with government partners in Indonesia; she holds a bachelor’s degree from Amherst College.⁠[34]

On November 9, 2026, GoFundMe announced that its community had surpassed $50 billion raised for individuals and nonprofits, that more than 200 million people had donated and that nearly 40% of donors had given more than once. It also published the first Kind 50 list of 50 fundraising stories, among them a fourth-grader who cycled 300 miles in a month for the American Cancer Society and the British ultramarathoner William Goodge, who ran 50 marathons across all 50 U.S. states in 24 days for Stand Up To Cancer. The company said its AI-powered fundraising tools had been used more than 100 million times. A YouGov survey accompanying the announcement, conducted among 4,141 U.S. adults from September 16 to 21, 2026, found that more than one-third had received support through GoFundMe or had a firsthand connection to someone who had. Also on the list were a fundraising challenge for fibroids research started by Lupita Nyong’o and the Music Man Project, which brought a show by performers with disabilities from the United Kingdom to Broadway. In the survey, 66% of respondents said they felt happier after financially supporting someone in need, against 82% of GoFundMe users; 74% of GoFundMe users said giving locally made them feel more connected to their community, against 58% of all respondents; and 93% of GoFundMe users were confident that giving through the platform could make a meaningful difference, 77% said it made helping easier and 54% said it felt more personal than transactional.⁠[35]

TIME wrote in April 2021 that GoFundMe took a 2.9% processing fee from each donation. As of October 2025 GoFundMe charged a transaction fee of 2.2% on donations to nonprofits and 2.9% on donations to individual fundraisers, plus $0.30 per donation; the default tip ABC7 found on the donation page was 16.5%, which donors had to change or remove manually, and consumers said the preset tip varied.⁠[20][29]

GoFundMe’s Terms of Service, effective June 23, 2026, list its payment processors as including Adyen LLC, Stripe, Inc. and PayPal, Inc.⁠[36]

The current GoFundMe Giving Guarantee took effect on September 24, 2025, at 8 a.m. Pacific Time and covers donors and beneficiaries on GoFundMe and GoFundMe Pro: donations of any amount are covered for one full year after the donation; a donor may be refunded the amount donated if the company finds that funds were misused against a fundraiser’s stated purpose or were not delivered to the beneficiary; and a beneficiary who is the sole stated recipient may claim within one year of being identified as beneficiary. The policy states that it does not constitute insurance and is not a warranty against fraud. On the same page the company says fraud on GoFundMe is rare and that a Trust & Safety team proactively monitors the platform and investigates all issues raised. After a claim is reviewed, refunds are processed in 3 to 10 business days; a beneficiary must first have notified the organizer and tried to resolve the issue and must have filed a police report; and claims made more than one year after donating, donations made outside the platform and donations to one’s own fundraiser are excluded. Refund requests for which a chargeback has been initiated, requests from unsupported countries and claims made more than three times in a month are also excluded. If a charity is unable or unwilling to accept the funds, the donation may be redirected to an alternate charity or refunded. Earlier donations remain under the previous Giving and Beneficiary Guarantees.⁠[37]

The Terms of Service prohibit fundraisers for the legal defense of financial and violent crimes.⁠[36]

The GoFundMe.org website describes it as an independent, publicly supported 501(c)(3) nonprofit that is a separate entity, independent of GoFundMe, Inc. and its fundraising platform, uses GoFundMe, Inc.’s technology and resources at no cost and makes unrestricted cash grants to individuals and nonprofits for emergency relief and urgent needs. The website states that since 2017 it and its partners have raised over $185 million into more than 235 funds and delivered more than 50,000 grants, and that in fiscal year 2026 it mobilized more than $8.2 million and deployed 5,394 grants. The website states that grants are delivered within hours and that the charity accepts tax-deductible donations by check, crypto, donor-advised funds and wire or ACH transfer.⁠[17]

Margaret Richardson, GoFundMe’s chief marketing and corporate affairs officer, chairs the board of GoFundMe.org; Kim Wilford, its chief legal officer, was chairman of GoFundMe.org from 2018 to 2024.⁠[38]

Under the Terms of Service, users in the United States contract with GoFundMe, Inc., users in Australia with GoFundMe Australia PTY Ltd., users in the United Kingdom with GFM International Services UK Limited, and users anywhere else with GoFundMe Ireland Limited; the notice addresses the terms give for these entities are in San Diego, Sydney, Birmingham and Dublin respectively. The terms provide that Irish law governs for users in the United Kingdom, the European Economic Area and Switzerland and California law for all other users; arbitration is administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, and disputes not subject to arbitration go to the state and federal courts in San Diego County.⁠[36]

Tech.co described GoFundMe in June 2015 as “the San Diego based company.” The company’s acquisition announcement of January 2022 carried a Redwood City dateline, and its press releases in 2025 and 2026 carry San Diego datelines.⁠[2][21][26][35]

As of November 2026 the company’s website lists its executive team as Tim Cadogan, chief executive officer and a member of the board; Arnie Katz, chief product and technology officer; Greg Mrva, chief financial officer; Margaret Richardson, chief marketing and corporate affairs officer; Guissu Baier, chief people officer; Steve Froehlich, chief customer growth officer; Paul Tkachuk, senior vice president of finance and data insights; and Kim Wilford, chief legal officer.⁠[38]

Cadogan began his career at The Boston Consulting Group in London, later ran Yahoo’s consumer search division and then led its global advertising business, and before joining GoFundMe was chief executive of OpenX, which the company’s website says he built into one of the world’s largest ad exchanges; he holds a BSc from the London School of EconomicsLondon School of Economics and Political ScienceThe London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is a specialist social science university in central London, founded in 1895 by members of the Fabian Society. It is known for research in economics, politics and social policy, and its alumni and staff include many Nobel laureates and national leaders.Open the full entry, an MPhil from the University of OxfordUniversity of OxfordThe University of Oxford is a university in Oxford, England, where teaching existed in some form by 1096; it describes itself as the oldest university in the English-speaking world and is organised as a federal system of the university and dozens of self-governing colleges.Open the full entry and an MBA from StanfordStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry, and has been a search and rescue volunteer since 2010. The company’s website states that he was named a “leading innovator” in TIME’s 2025 list of the world’s 100 most influential people.⁠[38]

Katz was previously chief product and technology officer of StubHub, vice president of international e-commerce at WalmartWalmartWalmart is an American retailer founded by Sam Walton in 1962, with businesses spanning physical retail, membership warehouse clubs, e-commerce and related services. Its businesses include Walmart and Sam’s Club, and it has expanded into other markets through international investments; its shares trade on Nasdaq under the ticker WMT.Open the full entry and co-founder and president of Relay Foods. Mrva joined in 2022 after serving as president of TPG Pace Tech Opportunities and chief financial officer of StubHub and holding roles at Morgan StanleyMorgan StanleyMorgan Stanley is an American global financial services firm that grew from an investment banking partnership into a publicly traded financial group spanning investment banking, securities trading, wealth management, and investment management.Open the full entry, BarclaysBarclaysBarclays is a banking and financial services group headquartered in London, United Kingdom, with Barclays PLC as its parent company. It traces its origins to a London goldsmith bank established in 1690 and developed through bank mergers, overseas expansion and investment banking reorganisations. Its businesses span UK retail and corporate banking, private banking and wealth management, global investment banking and US consumer banking.Open the full entry and Yahoo. Richardson led Trust and Safety at AppleAppleApple is a public technology company founded in 1976 and headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Its business includes the iPhone, Mac, iPad, wearables, and services such as digital content, payments, and cloud storage. The company builds its product system through in-house hardware, operating systems, and services.Open the full entry and at AirbnbAirbnbAirbnb is a travel platform for booking stays, experiences, and services, co-founded by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk and headquartered in San Francisco, United States; its Class A common stock trades on Nasdaq under the symbol ABNB. The business began with hosting guests in the founders’ home in 2007, then joined YC’s Winter 2009 batch, and gradually expanded into local experiences, services, and boutique hotels.Open the full entry, before that led Airbnb’s Global Policy team, and earlier served at the Department of Justice as chief of staff and counselor to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Baier helped scale Instacart and was a talent partner at General CatalystGeneral CatalystGeneral Catalyst (GC) is an investment firm founded in 2000 and headquartered in San Francisco, United States, created by Joel Cutler, David Fialkow and Bill Fitzgerald, that backs companies from the seed stage through growth.Open the full entry. Froehlich was chief revenue and development officer at ALSAC (St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital). Tkachuk was most recently at Facebook, where he helped scale its finance operations functions through its initial public offering and period of rapid growth. Wilford joined in 2018 after serving as senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary of WageWorks, and currently chairs GoFundMe Giving Fund.⁠[38]

The other members of the board are the co-founder Andy Ballester, who shares a board seat with his co-founder Brad Damphousse; Sharda Caro Del Castillo, formerly chief legal officer of Affirm; John Locke, who joined Accel in 2010; Woody Marshall, who joined TCV in 2008; Depelsha McGruder, chief operating officer and treasurer of the Ford Foundation; Monique Meche, formerly Twitter’s vice president of global public policy and philanthropy; James Slavet, a partner at Greylock since 2006; and Scott Wagner, chief executive of GoDaddyGoDaddyGoDaddy is a domain registrar and web services company headquartered in Tempe, Arizona, whose Class A common stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol GDDY. At the end of 2025 it had about 20.4 million customers and about 81 million domains under management.Open the full entry from 2018 to 2019.⁠[38]

GoFundMe: Official website: https://www.gofundme.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[39]

GoFundMe.org: Official website: https://www.gofundme.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[17]

X: Public account: https://x.com/gofundme (opens in a new window).⁠[39]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/gofundme (opens in a new window).⁠[39]

Instagram: Public account: https://www.instagram.com/gofundme/ (opens in a new window).⁠[39]

Facebook: Public account: https://www.facebook.com/gofundme (opens in a new window).⁠[39]