To date, GoFundMe has been one of the very big winners in the surge of fundraising services that have emerged online, leveraging the power of social media and the phenomenon of campaigns raising outsized money when they go viral. With a focus specifically on helping individuals collect money for good causes, GoFundMe has raised over $5 billion in donations for those using its platform.
Co-founded by the actor Edward Norton, producer Shauna Robertson, and Robert and Jeffrey Wolfe in 2009 while trying to raise money for the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust, CrowdRise has carved out a strong name for itself in non-profit funding services.
Over the years, it has worked with organizations like the Boston Marathon, New York City Marathon, Chicago Marathon, Ironman and Tough Mudder; as well as the American Cancer Society, Red Cross and UNICEF — some 10,000 charities in all. But in what is largely a game of scale, the aim here is to ramp up those numbers even more.
GoFundMe has recast CrowdRise as a more nimble version of what it already was, but also a more professional version. Nonprofits can now set up campaigns on their own, and run them with a more full suite of services. These include analytics to measure how the campaign performs; social media tools to help amplify the campaign; and event management tools to let nonprofits set up registration, ticketing and other aspects of a live event.