Analyze the aftermath of a disaster and GoFundMe will more than likely be there.
In recent weeks, the crowdfunding platform has been channeling advice to victims of hurricanes Helene and Milton. After a devastating fire devastated the Hawaiian resort of Maui last year, team members joined calls with emergency services and government personnel. He was also in contact with those coordinating the fallout from the recent knife attack on girls attending a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club in Southport, UK.
In such emergencies, “we are part of the response,” explains CEO Tim Cadogan, because the online platform is often the easiest and fastest way for family and friends to raise money for victims before public funds can be available. GoFundMe helps verify new campaigns and eliminate scams and copycat fundraisers.
Not all GoFundMe requests for help are crisis-motivated. A recent campaign has raised more than $3,000 toward a goal of $5,000 to preserve a puddle that formed around a fire hydrant in Brooklyn, where someone has been rehoming pet fish. But the group’s association with emergency fundraising, whether on a large scale or for individual medical needs, is both a sign of its reach and a source of controversy.
On a recent visit to his native United Kingdom, Cadogan describes GoFundMe as “a storytelling platform.” He’s a polished storyteller himself, with a ready supply of anecdotal evidence from GoFundMe’s work. He mentions that after the Financial Times interview, he will meet with Esther Ghey, mother of Brianna, the transgender teenager murdered last year. The Peace in Mind fundraiser run by Ghey and the Warrington Guardian set a target of £50,000 and has so far raised more than £89,000. A separate GoFundMe campaign has been set up to help the Ghey family raise £114,000.
“These are people who have been through things that are hard to even describe,” Cadogan says. Your role in such meetings is to “simply listen to where they are in their lives. And if we have played a role, [asking] what we did well, what we didn’t do, what we could have done better.”
Keeping an eye on the causes the company enables is a way to motivate himself and the 650 employees who work for GoFundMe and Classy, which provides fundraising software for nonprofits like hospitals and charities and was acquired in 2022.
That that work is being done by a private, for-profit company backed by venture capital investors including Accel and TCV worries some critics, such as Nora Kenworthy, a professor at the University of Washington Bothell. She is the author of Displacedabout the consequences of crowdfunding for medical needs, which is the largest category on GoFundMe. Kenworthy’s research suggests that many medical campaigns fall short of their goals. The successful ones tend to be run by wealthier, better-connected users.
In an email response to that criticism, Cadogan agreed that those with the most extensive networks would likely raise the most, adding: “We are working on ways to connect more fundraisers with people who could help, even if they don’t.” “they know the beneficiary.”
GoFundMe has also become a conduit for much larger campaigns. Following Russia’s invasion in 2022, the US State Department partnered with GoFundMe to direct private humanitarian contributions to Ukraine. “The question is whether we want to leave that kind of assistance in the hands of a single private company with very little transparency, even if it is doing things very well,” Kenworthy says.
Cadogan responds: “It’s a strange assumption that if you’re doing something good, you shouldn’t be a business.” Being a well-run company, he says, allows GoFundMe to invest in the necessary technology, people and systems.
GoFundMe does not disclose its detailed financial information, but in the UK, people pay a 2.9 percent transaction fee plus 25 pence for each donation, most of which covers card processing fees. Their biggest income comes from voluntary “tips,” which donors can adjust to zero if they wish, using an online “slider.”
Cadogan says he thinks it’s “quite beautiful” that customers decide how much to pay the platform. But the introduction of the slider was a more commercial move than an aesthetic one. Income fell at first, but the income generated by voluntary contributions now turns out to be very predictable. Meanwhile, fundraising volume continues to rise: 30 percent annually in the United Kingdom, for example, and 100 percent in Germany. GoFundMe has generated $30 billion in funds for users since 2010, of which $21 billion has been raised since 2019, including through Classy. Mexico is the last country to join the network.
Cadogan has commercial experience in internet search and online advertising, including as co-founder of advertising technology company OpenX. In 2019, as he approached 50, he set three criteria for his next challenge: it should involve consumer-facing products, like Yahoo, where he had worked for five years before founding OpenX; it should be “something completely new” to “start that learning curve again”; and it should be “somewhere that had a social impact. . . which my children are proud of.”
GoFundMe “was kind of a no-brainer,” he says, with the slight American accent and style of delivery he acquired after moving from the United Kingdom in 1996 to study for an MBA at Stanford University.
A day in the life of Tim Cadogan
5.45-6am I make my wife tea and then I usually go for a run with my dog on one of our local trails in the San Gabriel Mountains. It helps reactivate my brain and my body.
8am I start my workday by reviewing our dashboards to review customer activity.
9am-noon On the days I’m not traveling, I spend a lot of my time meeting with internal teams to determine what’s working, what’s not, why, and how we can learn and improve. Our business moves quickly because our customers are involved in some of the biggest news in the world. There are often crucial issues that we must address quickly. A constant element: many cups of tea.
Noon-6pm After a healthy lunch, I use a combination of standing meetings (such as structured weekly reviews of key topics) and quick one-on-one calls that are often spontaneous. Calls are particularly good for honing an idea, analyzing an issue, or making sure we’re aligned with each other. They are also great for walking and talking.
6pm-late As the night progresses, our communications with each other are primarily on Slack so we can all be with our families and stay connected remotely. Some nights I take a Peloton ride. I reflect on the ways people helped each other on GoFundMe that day. I have never worked in a place like this.
The learning curve was much steeper than I could have predicted. He assumed the new position on March 2, 2020, as the pandemic approached. Within days, the company went remote and Cadogan did not meet in person with any other colleagues for 18 months. It also lacked high-level support. GoFundMe had openings for CFO, CTO, Chief Product Officer, and Chief Marketing Officer. Additionally, crowdfunders “needed us like never before,” Cadogan recalls. “The level of [business]The volume of it was new. Small businesses, restaurants, bars, music venues. . . were laying off their employees, and the employers would establish a [fundraising] campaign to help employees they care about. And we had tens and tens of thousands of these.”
Cadogan says the company operated “in a state of crisis” for more than a year. To deal with it, he relied on what he had learned as the founder of a new company, where “things happen and you just have to deal with them.” But he also put his extracurricular experience to good use, as a volunteer with a search and rescue unit operating in the San Gabriel Mountains, near his home northeast of Los Angeles, and as an ultra-distance runner, “solving problems.” on the go” as you compete in 50 and 100 mile races.
Every rescue mission is a crisis for someone, Cadogan explains, and “the key thing you need in a crisis is to stay calm, use a repeatable process and stick to it.”
Cadogan says his major investors are “very happy with what we’ve done.” GoFundMe hasn’t raised funds from investors since 2015. Could it ever become a publicly traded company? The CEO says it could, although an initial public offering “is not on the immediate horizon.”
Listing has tested the purpose-driven business models of groups like crafts marketplace Etsy. But at GoFundMe, the interests of customers and shareholders are completely aligned, Cadogan says. “There has never been a time where I felt like I had to make a decision for the business.[versus the donors or fundraisers]. . . The company’s purpose is very simple: to help people help each other. . . “That’s all, that’s our job, we don’t have other businesses.”
If the company does that, “we will continue to do well and we will be able to invest and build the business. . . It is very clarifying,” he adds.