Fundraising or fund-raising is the process of seeking and gathering voluntary financial contributions by engaging individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies. Although fundraising typically refers to efforts to gather money for non-profit organizations, it is sometimes used to refer to the identification and solicitation of investors or other sources of capital for for-profit enterprises.
Street fundraising consists of various ways of asking for donations on behalf of a charity. Those asking for donations may be paid employees of the charity, or they may be volunteers.
GiveForward.com was launched on August 14, 2008 in Chicago, Illinois. It was an online fundraising tool designed to help people raise money for the causes and organizations that they care about. GiveForward.com has become popular among the growing number of people who fundraise to help pay for a loved one's medical bills. The Chicago Tribune called it the "future of medical fundraising in the Internet Age." It now part of GoFundMe.
CrowdRise is a for-profit crowdfunding platform that raises charitable donations. CrowdRise was founded by Edward Norton, Shauna Robertson, and the founders of Moosejaw, Robert and Jeffrey Wolfe. CrowdRise was acquired in 2017 by GoFundMe.
Indiegogo is an American crowdfunding website founded in 2008 by Danae Ringelmann, Slava Rubin, and Eric Schell. Its headquarters are in San Francisco, California. The site is one of the first sites to offer crowd funding. Indiegogo allows people to solicit funds for an idea, charity, or start-up business. Indiegogo charges a 5% fee on contributions. This charge is in addition to Stripe credit card processing charges of 3% + $0.30 per transaction. Fifteen million people visit the site each month.
WePay is an online payment service provider based in the United States. It provides an integrated and customizable payment solution, through its APIs, to platform businesses such as crowdfunding sites, marketplaces and small business software companies. It also offers partners fraud and risk protection.
GlobalGiving is 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in the United States that provides a global crowdfunding platform for grassroots charitable projects. Since 2002, more than 1.1M donors on GlobalGiving have donated move than $530 million to support more than 28,000 projects in 170 countries.
GoFundMe is an American for-profit crowdfunding platform that allows people to raise money for events ranging from life events such as celebrations and graduations to challenging circumstances like accidents and illnesses. From 2010 to the beginning of 2020, over $9 billion has been raised on the platform, with contributions from over 120 million donors.
Crowdfunding is a process in which individuals or groups pool money and other resources to fund projects initiated by other people or organizations "without standard financial intermediaries." Crowdfunded projects may include creative works, products, nonprofit organizations, supporting entrepreneurship, businesses, or donations for a specific purpose. Crowdfunding usually takes place via an online portal that handles the financial transactions involved and may also provide services such as media hosting, social networking, and facilitating contact with contributors. It has increased since the passage of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act.
FundRazr is a free crowdfunding and online fundraising platform released in 2009. FundRazr operates internationally in 35+ counties with the largest markets being United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia. It allows users to run a wide-range of crowdfunding campaigns by creating fundraising pages and sharing it via social media, messaging apps, email and more to raise money for over 100 types of causes such as nonprofit, medical care, education, community help, poverty alleviation, arts, memorials, and animal rescue causes. FundRazr also works with more than 4000 nonprofits, charities and social enterprises with an advanced fundraising toolset for free. The digital fundraising platform provides 8 different campaign types. They include microproject fundraising, peer-to-peer campaigns, wishlist campaigns, recurring donations, branded sponsorship campaigns, DIY projects, sweepstake campaigns, and storefront campaigns.
Fundly is a crowdfunding site for online fundraising. It allows non-profits, charities, politics, clubs, schools, teams, churches, and other causes to raise money online from friends, family, colleagues, donors, and other supporters via email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, and social media networks. It is also an app for social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn. It uses WePay to process donations. Donors are charged when they make a donation. Other sites like Fundly include GoGetFunding, Indiegogo and Kickstarter.
Founded in 2012, Tilt was a crowdfunding company that allowed for groups and communities to collect, fundraise, or pool money online. James Beshara and Khaled Hussein launched the platform under the name Crowdtilt in February 2012 out of Y Combinator.
Rally.org is an American social online fundraising platform for use by a wide range of individuals and organizations. It allows users to set up their own fundraising page, through which supporters can find information about their campaigns and make donations through Rally.org's proprietary payment system. The platform is best known for its use by causes including the Make A Wish Foundation and Jon Bon Jovi's Hurricane Sandy relief effort, filmmakers including the director of Buzkashi Boys, and political campaigns in the United States 2012 election cycle. In May 2012, Rally.org closed the largest Series A round of venture capital ever raised online. The company was founded in Austin, Texas, as Piryx, in 2009 by Tom Serres, Brian Upton, Jonas Lamis and Naveed Lalani.
CrowdFundEDU was a US-based private for-profit company founded in 2012 that provides a crowd funding website for education. People hold online fundraisers to get contributions for tuition, student loans, books and supplies, sports equipment, events and extracurricular activities. Student debt is recognized as a growing financial burden to young adults, but crowd funding brings an alternative to this form of lending and is considered by some to be one of the greatest financial creations of the digital age.
GivingTuesday, often stylized as #GivingTuesday for the purposes of hashtag activism, is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving in the United States. It is touted as a "global generosity movement unleashing the power of people and organizations to transform their communities and the world". The organization of the same name is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit that supports the global movement.
The School Fund is a person-to-person crowdfunding platform and nonprofit organization through which donors directly contribute to educational scholarships for low-income students in countries that do not offer free, public secondary school. Like other civic crowdfunding platforms, through The School Fund, large numbers of online visitors support philanthropic efforts by pooling small contributions. The School Fund crowdfunds for students who have been identified by their teachers or local school officials as not having enough money to continue paying to go to school.
@HopeMob is a not for profit crowdfunding site that raises money for direct aid to worthy causes. It was co-founded by Shaun King and Chad Kellough in 2012. People with specific needs apply to the site and are vetted. The vetting includes asking for references, conducting interviews, and researching on social media. Support is then given to approved projects to help them present a compelling case. Funds are then raised and used to purchase the specific items people need, such as a medical procedure; money is not given directly to those raising funds.
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, in modern times typically via the Internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over US$34 billion were raised worldwide by crowdfunding.
Outreach Calling Inc is a for-profit fundraiser which was incorporated in 2009. It is headquartered in New Jersey and offices in the United States and Canada with a virtual office in Reno, Nevada. The firm’s telemarketers solicit funds on behalf of not-for-profit charities. In 2012 they raised $21,332,659. Of that $20,227,761 was retained by the charities.
GiveSendGo is a Christian crowdfunding website founded in 2014.
