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If you\u2019ve ever contributed to a charitable fundraising campaign online in the last seven years, chances are that one of those campaigns (if not all of them) have been through\u00a0GoFundMe<\/a>, a web platform where people can set up and donate to campaigns for charitable causes.<\/p>\n The popular site and the company that has created it have been on a long-term growth tear: earlier this year the company passed 40 million individual donors who have made a total of $4 billion in donations, up from 30 million and $3 billion<\/a> eight months ago.<\/p>\n And now it\u2019s gearing up for the next step. As part of a bigger plan to become, in CEO Rob Solomon\u2019s words \u201cthe giving layer for the internet\u201d, GoFundMe is expanding its operations to France and Spain, part of a bigger plan to create localised services across Europe. By the end of the summer, GoFundMe plans to be in 18 countries, up from six currently including the US, Canada, Australia and the UK.<\/p>\n Often, startups embarking on international expansions are often the result of \u2014 or the driver for \u2014 massive funding injections. This isn\u2019t the case here. Rob Solomon, GoFundMe\u2019s CEO, said that GoFundMe will roll out in the new markets organically (that is, no plans for acquisitions), and using proceeds from its own balance sheet, since GoFundMe has been profitable for years already.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re doing this\u00a0all on our own steam,\u201d he said in an interview. On the subject of future funding, the company is not raising money right now, \u201cbut\u00a0the attitude is never say never. There could be reasons such as an acquisition, but there are no proactive plans for VC investing, and the business is profitable.\u201d (You can read more from Solomon here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Whether that remains the case longer term remains to be seen. The company has no plans to get acquired \u2014 which doesn\u2019t mean that companies might have been interested<\/a> regardless \u2014 and it sounds like going public is very much in its sights. \u201cWe\u2019ve all agreed that the potential outcomes are that you get acquired or go public, and we have no intention of getting acquired,\u201d he said in response to my question about IPOs down the line.<\/p>\n The company nothing if not ambitious. \u201cWe\u00a0are completely heads down focused on global expansion and building the business and creating a better service, as part of what we see as the\u00a0foundational elements for a platform company,\u201d Solomon said. \u201cWe want to be the giving layer of the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n There is, in fact, a massive opportunity here. In the US, there is some $350 billion made annually in charitable donations, with the figure bumping up to $500 billion globally. And right now the wider landscape for connecting money to causes is massively fragmented and inefficient.<\/p>\n Solomon talks of a \u201cdonor graph\u201d \u2014 not unlike Facebook\u2019s social graph where you can figure out a map of all your connections to people and interests, or LinkedIn\u2019s professional graph that tries to create the same picture for your work life. In GoFundMe\u2019s case it could related specifically to where an individual already donates money, and what that individual cares about, and in turn where she or he might want to donate in the future.<\/p>\n \u201cWe think we stand a very good chance of being able to provide a platform company for that opportunity,\u201d Solomon said.<\/p>\n The applications for this are potentially very interesting. For example, can help larger non-profits figure out which consumers would be best to target in a specific campaign, rather than spraying and praying, and potentially harming your reputation.<\/p>\n On the consumer side, people often find themselves in the predicament of wanting to give more to charity but finding it hard to figure out what to do next, and to feel secure in knowing that their money really will go where it\u2019s intended. GoFundMe potentially can provide solutions to these sorts of cases.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also not a completely uncontested space. In addition to a number of competitors in the same direct area as GoFundMe (such as JustGiving), Facebook has built tools for non-profit\u00a0organizations<\/a> and individuals<\/a>\u00a0(on behalf of those non-profits) to fundraise for causes.<\/p>\n And earlier this year, it also debuted a \u201cpersonal fundraiser<\/a>\u201d tool that is perhaps its closest competition with GoFundMe. (Facebook\u2019s fees are lower than those of GoFundMe,\u00a0 6.9% + $.30 fee for payment processing fees, fundraiser vetting, security and fraud protection, versus\u00a07.9% + $.30 processing for personal or charity campaigns at GoFundMe.) However, we\u2019ve heard very little about how any of the fundraising feature have been doing since they\u2019ve launched.<\/p>\n Co-founded by\u00a0Andrew Ballester and\u00a0Brad Damphousse in 2008 in San Diego,\u00a0GoFundMe sits alongside others like Kickstarter, Indiegogo and JustGiving.com as part of a larger crowdfunding universe, where people create campaigns to collect money and primarily use social media to attract attention for them.<\/p>\n The company is backed<\/a> by\u00a0Accel, Technology Crossover Ventures, Iconiq Capital, Greylock, Meritech and\u00a0Stripes<\/a>. But while it has provided a new level of transparency and ease for people to donate money, ironically GoFundMe has never disclosed just how much money it has raised itself.<\/p>\n To be fair, there have been donations coming in from around the world to the platform for years already. Opening up localised operations, however, means being able to take local currencies and having the site translated into specific languages, and also means more dedicated customer support and business development teams.<\/p>\n Some early campaigns that have been created in a limited beta have included efforts to help refugees<\/a>, finance medical needs<\/a>,\u00a0save small businesses<\/a>, and provide food in Somalia<\/a>.<\/p>\n For the time being, all of GoFundMe\u2019s European operations are being run out of Dublin, where the company set up an international office last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2017\/06\/jarre-somalia-gofundme.jpg?w=680\")
If you’ve ever contributed to a charitable fundraising campaign online in the last seven years, chances are that one of those campaigns (if not all of them) have been through\u00a0GoFundMe, a web platform where people can set up and donate to campaigns for charitable causes. The popular site and the company that has created it have been on a long-term growth tear: earlier this year the… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/img><\/a>
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