GoFundMe Reviews

GoFundMe allows you to create personal fundraising pages for just about anything.

Have you had experience with GoFundMe? What do you think? Leave your comments below.

P.S. Please provide honest reviews and do not try to pump your own product / service. Reviews are analysed through various means including checking out the IP address, email address and more. This ensures only true opinions are being reflected! :)

 

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GoFundme asks me for money everyday

Jan 02, 2017 by debra hudnall

I began a gofundme account and after I submitted it, I have gotten messages everyday, every hour to pay money so that people can see it. I paid it. And an hour later, it asked me for more money. I don't get that


Worked for me!

Dec 17, 2016 by Cheryl Rutten

I have a friend who suffered a stroke and will be needing help with expenses. I set up a gofundme.com account, asked several questions, got answer's back quickly. Received some donations that I then had transferred to my checking account, all went very smoothly and in a timely manner. Was worried at first with several bad reviews, only bad part is fees, but there is no such thing as a free lunch and I appreciate a sight like this to help me and others out.


Ignored my plee

Dec 15, 2016 by Tim

A couple years ago I submitted a plea on gofundme to help my daughter. She had just been evicted from her rental and at the same time her old car broke down. So she was homeless with no transportation to her job as a housekeeper for a major hotel. I was in no position to help living 600 miles away living on a small pension in a small trailer. I am a disabled veteran unable to work. The gofundme neted $70. $50 from my mother and $20 from a family friend. What pees me off is seeing similar stories get on the local or national news and all of a sudden they are worthy and the people get thousands of dollars more than they need. In some cases they get rich....ugggggghhhh


Horrible experience

Dec 10, 2016 by Linda Fares

Will not allow me to withdraw funds for a cause to help the poor. Everything requested was given and still no withdraw. Emails arent getting anywhere and now after days no response. Not sure what to do now!


Forced to pay for WePay=Zero satisfaction

Nov 20, 2016 by Jenny Rooker

My mother died unexpected and tho a veteran there is really no real services. As she was my employer with boosted funds for homecare it left me in quite a jam. 2600/mo to pay 1600 in joint overhead to 700/mo. The fees for the GFM site are up front and hella pricey to start but my surprise when I was forced to make a "we pay" account ! And takes money for what? My funding stalled when I was asked by my family to raise the amount so they could help me but all donations after my first withdrawal to cremate my mother are only showing up as the donor post but not in the account! As it is there was a sizeable bite taken out. The remainder was for me and my disabled son to have gas to return to our homestate AZ instead of this hellhole I came to in order to assist my mom and bring her to AZ. What is sad I could probably get more if I was wanting court fees to "save my pit bull that bit" from euthanizing. It was very easy to set up but a little lacking in disclosure of ALL fee. I that crappy site that takes a week to pay you is mandantory it should be mentioned as a fee upfront.


FRUSTRATED w/ lack of communication from GFM!!!!!

Nov 19, 2016 by L. Mullen

I am reallllly frustrated with a GoFundMe(Medical) account I have my niece. Donations are s l o w l y trickling in BUT, twice now I have spent over an HOUR writing an update to keep her donors abreast of what we're doing and how she is. NEITHER of them showed up on my FB page and it is IMPOSSIBLE to get a human being from GFM to help resolve the issue! They only have an ENDLESS list of drop downs you have to keep opening like a hallway of endless doors...helllooo, hellllo....helllllllooooooo is there any help here? Helllllllllloooooooo, here? How about here????
I am too angry to continue my quest with them as time is of the essence for a person fighting a terminal illness! I will stop promoting this one (kinda useless anyway) and will take whatever money is in there, because I am going elsewhere to start a different campaign and BTW the one I am going to does NOT charge you money except for the payment processing fee from donors. Too bad...if they would provide some customer service for the money they are making, I wouldn't have left!


needs to be more disclosure and tighter rules

Sep 30, 2016 by liz b

I friend recently told me about his cousin died of cancer and my friend sister (whom no one will speak to anymore) started a gofundme account. it raised a couple thousand for funeral expenses. she kept all the money and refused to give the deceased family member any of it. go fund had put the check in her name so she felt she was entitled to it. these stories are more common. first across the top of the page of any gofund story or account you click on it should state this is who open it, this is who it is for and this is who the check will be written to. if a check is not writtento the cause or family it was meant to help, giver be weary. Any go fund rep should have some sort of contact with the family it was set up for, not just the person setting it up. there needs to be protocol for hundreds or thousands of $ being handed over. rules needs to stated, signed and dated that any money not given to the stated cause or family will be considered fraud and they will be criminally prosecuted and or reported to the IRS for reimbursement of the funds (withholding tax refunds)
I feel real bad for my friend the family has no recourse because she has and spent the check.


Justice for Buster

Sep 13, 2016 by Adrianna

Go fund me refuses to release funds raised on my behalf for the intentions they were raised for. They have no contact phone number to reach anyone and the emails are a run around game. Pretty sad.


AWFUL Experience

Jun 25, 2016 by Cori S.

I will no longer campaign through GoFundMe because they work with WePay, a joke of a company. They're the absolute worst. They take money straight out of your account for the mistakes of someone else, unauthorized! They refuse to return it to you, or be understanding in any way. They'll send you an email telling you that they had already done so, not even giving you a chance to contest or ask why. $45.46 stolen by WePay from my personal bank account, and I'll never see it again. I guess I do have one thing to thank WePay for... Thank you for showing me that I should have never done business with you or ever again, and now I can warn others against doing the same. I have nothing good to say about this company. Unfair and money-hungry... The absolute worst experience. Worst part? GoFundMe would not help me at all in the situation. It's a shame that they work with WePay. They're the reason for my giving GoFundMe such a terrible rating.


Absolute Crap.

Jun 17, 2016 by Chris

First off, Go Fund Me takes 30 cents on every dollar. Second, No one will ever donate. I have spread my campaign all over Facebook and had a bunch of shares. Not one donation. The only way to get any donations is if you're sick or an animal that is sick. I saw a cat that needed a wheelchair raise over 30,000 in like 3 days. Come on.


Not strict enough rules

May 05, 2016 by Teresa Kratochvil

Too easy to cheat people out of their money my nephews money went to his ex girlfriend because she opened the go fund me when he was dying and she profitted from it didn't even help pay his funeral expenses


Weakness for donors, undisclosed

Mar 17, 2016 by Jerry

Made donation. Put in comment. Requested my name not be shown.
When posted, did show "anonymous", but comment was not shown.
Asked help from GofundMe.
Back:
"Currently, the option to have your name hidden, but a comment present isn't an option for the donations.

Wish I had known that.
Not disclosed prior to making a donation.

Seems simple enough.
(Anonymous user, with a comment.)
Glaring weakness in GoFundMe’s product/service.


go fund themselves

Feb 20, 2016 by nancy collins

My daughter went through gofundme to aid me in avoiding eviction from my apartment because I lost my job and had no funds to pay rent. We met the goal for my rent payment so at the time she went to transfer the generous donations sent by people...gofundme took 20% of the funds before they transferred the rest of the money. I had to borrow the rest from a friend. I would have understood should they have taken 5% or 10% but 20 seems extremely excessive for people in need. My daughter wanted to help her mother but it seems gofundme is a company that seeks out to fund themselves from vulnerable people.


Eyes wide open

Feb 02, 2016 by Joseph Jerkovich

I set up a fund for a friend diagnosed with cancer and though the whole procedure was easy enough to do as well as the collecting of donations, there was a rude surprise when i tried to withdraw the money. I thought I had researched on the site well enough to know what to expect but was frustrated when it actually occurred. I my case I did not wish to burden my friend with any part of the process and wanted to handle it on my own. As i went trough the process to set that up, suddenly things became complicated. even with back and forth email I was never given enough information at one time to know what to expect. When it became clear that the only way the money would be released was with authorization from my friend, I proceeded only to discover that my friend had to make a copy of an ID with him in it and address some additional requirements. I was mad that only till the end did I find out that my friend, dealing with his diagnosis and medical appointments had to comply with requests for him to meet their demands. My advise is to be fully aware of what you must do before, during and after the fund is initiated.


GoFundMe is amazingly responsive

Jan 18, 2016 by jJessica

This site has been more than responsive to every question, and has changed my family's outlook from Hopeless to Hopeful! Thank you GoFundMe. The only thing that I feel could help is that it would be nice for people upfront to know is that the $$ that they see isn't necessarily to gross amount that the recipient receives. Changes the donating perception


Read carefully

Jan 11, 2016 by S. TS

Fundraisers need to read all terms and conditions to make an informed decision about using GoFundMe. It seems OK though.
Donors need to be aware that not all requests for donations are giving you the whole truth. Research all aspects of the story. Eg. Medical- eg. People wanting money forrocedures covered by their Govt healthcare system.


Read the fine print; there are no free lunches

Jan 09, 2016 by sara baer

Those big number successes are few and far between.

I experienced most of the issues that have been shared here when a dear family member set up a campaign when life handed me the unacceptable.

GFM does discriminate, is easily used as a scam and you could be endangered if you share your name, and there is little you can do about it except to start another one without your name attached and let the people who tried to help you know what happened, but that anonymity costs your new campaign because then people don't trust it because of the pervasive scamming, so it's all the same.

They are not perfect communicators and there are assumptions and judgments with and without good cause.

The funds you raise are reduced by at least 10% by GFM/moneychanger before you get them plus the government does consider it income, so if you're in a 25% bracket, that's a 35+% loss or a 65% gain, depending on how you frame it.

Direct to Paypal costs 8%.

There is a need for a safe, genuine, straightforward way to do this that allows you to keep more of your donations, but I have not yet found it other than direct solicitation of cash from those you already know, and in many cases you've already done that or you wouldn't be here.

Prayers and best wishes to all in need who were inspired to try this because the majority of us do need the help and find it hard to ask, or others wouldn't be inspired to do it for us.


Gofundme

Dec 24, 2015 by Candace

I have used gofundme to raise now over $25,000 for 4 friends battling cancer. Sure, someone could use the site to scam, but to give it poor rates based on the few who do??? What about all the families it helps? I love gofundme! The total 7.9% taken is honest for the product. Easy website, easy viral social media exposure, and it has helped everyone's camapaign I have started greatly. 5 stars always!


DISCRIMINATES AGAINST CHRISTIANS

Dec 22, 2015 by NJ

If you are a christian, watch out. All you have to do is begin a campaign on your stance for your beliefs, and they will shut your account down. Search the story of the Kleins family.
Very sad, that this people that own this site want to control the Christians of America, and punish them for their Faith.
Don't support this site.


Nobody ever donates unless ur story is on the news

Dec 20, 2015 by teresa

I have a friend her and her husband and twin 4 yr olds lost everything a week before Christmas because of a house fire and not one donation . So either people are just that heartless or like i said get the news involved . Pretty sad these babies will go without a christmas because they werent on the news .


Crowdfunding Websites , USA 1.7 5.0 109 109 GoFundMe will seize the funds from causes that they don't agree with. Find another option.
RECOMMENDED CROWDFUNDING WEBSITES:

GoGetFunding is our recommended website for personal / cause fundraising.

Kickstarter is recommended for creative all-or-nothing campaigns.

Crowdfunder.com is the place to go for equity crowdfunding.