Now, technology has changed a lot about finance, including fundraising. Go fund Me, the US crowdfunding platform sets up in twenty ten, operates in twenty countries, including here in the UK, where it's celebrating two million fundraisers being started here. Everything from a statue to commemorate Monty Python's Terry Jones, to funding cochlear ear implants, cancer care and help for the victims of the recent Dagenham fire. Joining me now is go fund Me CEO Tim mcaduggan, who's on a visit
to the UK. Welcome to the radio studio, Tim, Good morning.
Good morning, great to be here.
Yeah, so I want to dig into this story. I mean, to me, it was a staggering amount of money actually that is going through the crowdfunding platform. You say that the public is actually being more generous than ever. I suppose the optimistic version is that this democratizes fundraising, right, he puts fundraising on your phone to anybody. Critics say that it exacerbates inequalities, that it's basically a kind of
symptom of government failures. Why people giving and why are they being so generous?
Now, Well, it really goes back to a fundamental impulse which is we all want to help one another. And what we see now is that something that we have done ever since we have been around is now happening digitally and go fummi has just made it really easy and simple for you to help other people, and typically that's your friends and family and people in your community coming together to help.
Go fund me overall is a for profit business. Should there be more transparency about what successful fundraising is on your size?
We put an enormous amount of time into thinking about how do we make it easier for people to set up a fundraiser and be successful with that, and so recently we've started to use a lot more AI technology to help with some of those processes. So, for instance, writing the headline of your story is quite difficult for a lot of people, so we now give people AI generated suggestions that they can choose if they like, and we're finding that over fifty percent of people choose those
titles and their campaigns do better as a result. So that's just one example of the ways that we're sort of smoothing the path for them to try and make it more successful then for them to fundraise.
Yeah, and I mean a lot of the campaigns are obviously very highly personal, not always kind of traumatic, sometimes more optimistic. But yes, it's a lot of it is about, from what I read, algorithms that boost the different campaigns.
I suppose what happens. You talk about two million fundraisers being started here in the UK, how many are successful, How do you characterize success and how much information do you think individuals who use the site should be given actually about the kind of goals that they're putting up there.
Yeah, I mean, so what you just talked about goals. One of the things we're working on is that you get to set a goal for each fundraiser, and that's actually a hard thing to do. So people don't know. Most people setting up a fundraiser haven't done it before and they don't know do I set it for five
hundred pounds or a thousand? So again, we'll use technology and the data we have from over thirty billion of fundraising that we've had on the platform to help people pick a number that makes sense and then they can change that number over time.
The thing is registered charitable trusts in the UK. They have a lot of scrutiny, you know, when they raise money, when they ask people when they may perhap to do a TV spot or a radio spot commercial and an advert, they have to answer a lot of questions in the UK about what their money goes towards. That's not quite the same when it comes to crowdfunding.
Well, it's not exactly the same, but we do a lot of so we as you mentioned, a lot of the stories are very personal and so people have to trust us. So the most important thing we do is make sure we earn that trust every day, so we are ensuring and verifying every campaign. We make sure that the person who's setting up the campaign is actually that person.
We make sure that the story is legitimate, and we make sure that the money is going to the correct recipient of the campaign, and we work with of third party payment providers as well on the back and all the money actually goes through third party banks before it is sent to the recipient. So there's a lot of work that goes into making sure that the right campaigns are up there and being presented with the right level of scrutiny.
But what constitutes a good or a worthy cause can be quite contentious. How do you navigate that? You know, I'm thinking about events in the middle East, for example, where many go funding funding campaigns could be considered controversial.
Well, really, you know, we think about what is within our terms of service, and beyond that, it's up to our users and not just the people who are asking for money, but the people who are giving money. So what may be controversial to one person may not be controversial to another person, and we leave that to the community to decide what do they want to support.
And that's the bit that I think is so interesting because so this is an argument that is used widely across social media plans, right that it's that the social media platforms are facilitators and it's up to the individual to do sort of more of the thinking. That argument is facing a big challenge and that is being driven largely by the EU in terms of regulation around social media. Do you think that crowdfunding platforms like yours might be next in terms of in terms of that regulatory drive.
Well, actually, we already say that we are responsible for what is on our platform, and we do put everything through those reviews because money is flowing and it's very important that we adhere to the standards that we set and the legal obligations that we and our payment partners have, so we hold ourselves to those standards already, and I think we do a great job. And that's one of the reasons why so many people use our platform because they trust it.
So what sort of proportion of campaigns would be rejected?
Then a very small percent, because you have to understand that most of fundraising is for friends and family and people in your community, and so if you set up a fundraisers not legitimate, it really doesn't go anywhere. That's the first proof point is it's not strangers that start the support of a campaign. It starts with the people that know you and want to help you with the
situation you're in your life. And then on occasion, the campaigns that you more typically hear in the news, you hear about them, they go broader and reach a broader set of people. But most campaigns are about things in your life and the people who are supporting you, the people who know you, care about you, love you, want to support you.
Yeah, and I suppose that's why you wonder. I mean, if is that then go fundme that is scrutinizing the donations or is it the people around the fundraisers who are squets?
We're doing both. Obviously, people are around the fundraiser are looking and seeing who else supported, but we're also reviewing every single donation to make sure it's legitimate. And so we play our part, but the community or so plays their part.
I mean, that's quite a big claim. It's quite a big statement, isn't it, to say that you're scrutinizing everyone. But look, I also want to ask about growth because I mentioned that you're in twenty countries and I was pretty staggered by the amount of money that is flowing to crowdfunding websites. In terms of next sources of growth, where do you see those?
Well, we see them in the countries that we're currently operating, and actually we just added a couple We just launched in Mexico in April, and that's been growing very very quickly, which has been thrilling to see. We just extended to the region of Puerto Rico just about a month ago,
So adding markets is one source. But also we're still actually quite a small part of the overall giving and philanthropic industry, and so there's a lot of opportunity to grow just by helping people understand this is an accessible way to ask for help. It is an accessible way to mobilize your community to help you. And so by making it easier and building the brand and reputation, which we've been doing I think good job of makes it
more accessible to more people. So it's a lot of opportunity in the twenty markets that we're currently in.
What kind of support do you give to And we hear about these campaigns that take off, and you know, people go out looking for maybe a couple of thousand dollars or pounds and end up with much much more. When campaigns do take off, how do you support people that might end up with an awful lot more money than they originally planned to handle.
Well, everyone has access to all of the tools which we keep improving upon. But if in the situation you mentioned where something takes off, we have a special team that will come in and handhold people through that situation because it can be unexpected and it can lead to pressure and difficult questions that people hadn't anticipated. So we have a team that works through that and has a long history of helping people through that process.
Okay, but you don't put out data on how many of those sorts of funds exist. I mean should there be more transparency about what people are raising on the platform overall, because that's not put out.
Yeah, we share it. It's sort of I mean, I can give you some sense of it. A lot of it. A lot of fundraising is around medical issues, probably not surprising. They are also emergencies. We may see situations like in the wake of the recent riots in the North of England, we saw a lot of fundraisers for say Liverpool Library which raised two hundred and fifty thousand pounds citizens device Buriens in Sunderland that was burnt out. Those are sort
of emergency related campaigns. And then we see a lot of life you know, we see people raising for their pets. We see people raising to help buy books for their kid that's going to university. We see people raising for their arts center or you know, a pub that they want to see renovated that they support, or a local library or a bookshop. So a broad range, really a full range of what you can imagine people needing helpful in their lives.
How much for our de deal with platform? How many cases would you identify in a year.
It's a very small percentage actually, because what most people are doing is good. What most people are doing is asking for help. There's completely legitimate and they're asking for their friends and families, so it's actually a very small part.
Do you work with law enforcement if there's allegations of.
Fraud, absolutely we do. You know, crowdfunding fraud is a crime, and we work with law enforcement in those rare cases
to make sure those prosecutions proceed. The other thing I want to mention is, on top of all the checks that we do with the data and technology that we have by virtue of having thirty billion of fundraising through the platform, we also have a last line of defense if you like, which is called the gofund Me Giving Guarantee, which means that any donation of any amount in any anywhere from around the world for a year after the donation is fully covered if there's any kind of problem.
We're the only company in the space that has that