Crowdfunding

This September, charity: water, a New York-based nonprofit providing clean water in 24 countries, had its 10th birthday. I realize it’s odd to talk about an organization having a birthday, but a birthday is at the heart of charity: water’s founding and its trailblazing fundraising strategies. Scott Harrison, founder of charity: water, launched it with…

Martin Shkreli wants you to punch him in the face. Well, not you, in particular. But it could be you—if you're the highest bidder in this, um, unique charity auction. If you're not familiar with Shkreli, you may know him better as the "most hated man in America." He's the smarmy pharma bro who jacked up the price of a life-saving drug by 5,556 percent, allegedly helmed multiple Ponzi schemes, and turned a congressional hearing into a clown show...

Apparently, LinkedIn's co-founder wants to add "Trump instigator" to his resume. Reid Hoffman, the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, pledged on Monday to donate up to $5 million to veterans organizations if Donald Trump releases his tax returns before the final presidential debate. The pledge follows a crowdfunding campaign launched late last week by…

A Christian-owned children’s home is landing in the headlines after refusing to accept a $100 donation from an atheist group—a decision that sparked a viral crowdfunding campaign that has now raised more than $25,000. It all started when a man named Matt Wilbourn said that he donated $100 to the Murrow Indian Children’s Home in…

The more than 430 fundraisers posted on the GoFundMe website after the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., have exposed weaknesses inherent in these popular do-it-yourself charity campaigns: waste, questionable intentions and little oversight. The fundraisers—an average of more than four for each of the 49 killed and 53 wounded—include travelers asking…

Crowdfunding has changed the face of disaster/emergency fundraising. It offers a way for people worldwide to offer monetary assistance to anyone, anywhere, anytime. It is hosted on platforms that the nonprofit does not have to own or run, thus taking away a lot of logistical details that can bog down an emergency response. But crowdfunding brings with it a new set of challenges to be addressed...

The internet has made a lot of things either obsolete or virtually obsolete in recent years, including bookstores, record stores, video stores and print journalism. In the early days of the web, however, very few would have predicted that online charity would have a sizable impact on the world at large. Yet the internet is…

One evening last December, 400 men and women in tuxedos and gowns met at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to take a trip to a small village in Ethiopia. Few of them had ever been to the East African country before, and while they were scheduled to depart that evening, nobody had…

A crowdfunding campaign to raise money for victims of this weekend’s horrific Orlando nightclub shooting has raised more than $2.1 million in slightly more than 27 hours, becoming both the largest and the fastest-funded campaign in GoFundMe’s six-year history, the site confirmed this afternoon. The campaign was launched by Equality Florida, the state’s largest LGBT rights…

A GoFundMe campaign has raised more than $1.5 million in 24 hours for victims of the Pulse nightclub mass shooting that left 50 dead and at least 53 wounded. Equality Florida, an LGBT civil rights organization, started the crowdfunding campaign early Sunday morning with a $100,000 goal. The campaign quickly exceeded that goal and subsequent goals of $500,000 and $1 million, reported Mic, prompting Equality Florida to raise the goal to $2 million. More than 38,000 people have contributed so far...