The GoFundMe team recently announced that over $3 billion in total funding has been raised on the platform as of October 2016. This exciting news is coming just five months after GoFundMe announced reaching their $2 billion-dollar milestone, meaning that the already popular the San Diego based startup has been experiencing some rapid growth lately.
GoFundMe, a donation-based crowdfunding platform used to raise money for a wide variety of causes and emergencies, was launched in 2010 by co-founders Andrew Ballester and Brad Damphousse. Since then, the platform has gone from an obscure way to raise money to a household name known for rallying vast communities to help those in need.
“I’m excited to announce that another billion dollars has been raised on GoFundMe, bringing us to more than $3 billion total raised on our social fundraising platform. That is an astounding amount of help given and help received – everyday people getting the assistance they need for their classrooms, their families, their favorite charities, their houses hit by storms, their community members in need,” said GoFundMe CEO, Rob Solomon, in a blog post.
“One of the most thrilling trends to emerge since out last billion-dollar milestone is the virality of our campaigns. I don’t just mean one campaign going viral – I mean people catching the giving spirit and being inspired to start campaigns to help other people all over the world.”
One interesting thing that came up when people looked at the numbers is the fact that even though GoFundMe users have donated over $1 billion in the last five months, the same number of donors using the platform – about $25 million. This suggests that there are quite a few repeat donors on the platform, and that donors are probably starting to give more. GoFundMe recently helped raise over $10 million dollars for victims of the Louisiana floods and $7.8 million dollars was raised to support the families of the Pulse shooting in Orlando, Florida.
Several viral and record breaking campaigns have led to GoFundMe reaching this $3 billion-dollar milestone. One of those was a campaign to raise funds for Filencio the Paleta Man, which raised over $384,000 from more than 17,000 people in just one month.
The project that started with a modest $3,000 goal was shared on social media more than 121,000 times and became way more popular than creator Joel Cervantes Macias could have expected.
Chauncy’s Chance is another viral campaign that raised over $341,000 to help Chauncy support himself and his disabled mother. More than 14,000 people got together over the course of four months to raise this money, changing a young man’s life forever.
To learn more about the real reason GoFundMe has seen such explosive growth in the last five months, check out this post.
