GoFundMe is capitalizing on the social aspect of its cause-based fundraising platform by launching GoFundMe Team Fundraising, a new initiative that lets multiple people raise money for a single entity or effort. The popular service hopes this new offering will make it easier for schools, sports teams, or other groups to create fundraising campaigns on its platform.
Thus far, GoFundMe has helped raise $5 billion for various causes, from natural disaster relief to helping a deserving individual pay for college. But if multiple groups were looking to support the same cause, things got a little bit tricky on the site as different groups and individuals would have to create different campaigns. But this is no longer the case with Team Fundraising. Now, a single organization can create a main page, then link individual contributors to that page so that they can raise funds on their own, but ultimately contribute to the central pot. Campaign leaders will also have the option of showing leaderboards to display progress.
Team Fundraising generally works in the same way as other options on the GoFundMe platform do — you won’t have to pay a platform fee, nor will you have to pay to head a team campaign. Of course, there are still processing fees, but these are pretty much standard across all payment platforms.
“Before, when a sports team, school club, professional organization, or other group was looking to raise money together, the options were limited and could take a lot of time and resources in order to execute successfully,” said Rob Solomon, CEO of GoFundMe, in a statement. “With GoFundMe Team Fundraising, we’re introducing an easy social fundraising solution to maximize reach and success for groups.These new tools will also give our existing community another way to raise funds. Our goal is to make fundraising faster, easier and more efficient for anyone looking to raise money, whether an individual, nonprofit, or team.”
While GoFundMe is still the leader in terms of fundraising services, Facebook is quickly gaining ground. The social network also has a team component to its own fundraising feature, and is doing everything it can to rebuild its image by highlighting feel-good functionality like contributing to various relief funds or hosting a fundraiser for a birthday. Ultimately, however, when companies are competing to be the biggest in the donations game, it seems like everyone is winning.
