Community Fundraisers

What a community fundraiser looks like

Community fundraisers are the local ones: a fire at the local coffee shop, a family with a crisis everyone on the block knows about, or a pantry trying to keep the shelves full through the winter. Small local groups raise here too, for a building, a program, or one season of equipment. Most of the time you aren't persuading strangers that a need is real. You're giving people who already care one central place to send help, and one place to see that it arrived.

Write down what the money covers, in parts: rebuilding the kitchen, replacing the freezer, three months of rent for the resource center. Name who the funds are for. Then post updates as things change. In a small town the people watching the fundraiser are the same people you'll see at church and at the next town meeting, so keep the updates plain and keep them coming.

Community fundraising: how to set one up

Community fundraising on GiveSendGo starts the same way every other fundraiser does, and it takes about ten minutes. Create an account, open My Fundraisers, and click Start a GiveSendGo, then pick the recipient's country, set a goal, choose a category, write the title and the story, and add a photo or a short video before you publish. You don't need nonprofit status, an EIN, or a committee vote to get a page live. Anyone can start a fundraiser.

What a local fundraiser needs to hold up in front of people who know you:

• Set a goal that matches the real cost, and break it into the parts it covers.
• Name the person receiving the funds, plainly, in the story.
• Use photos of the actual place and the actual people.
• Make a direct ask, and share it more than once instead of posting it and leaving it.
• Post updates as the money gets used, since your givers will be at the next meeting.

Start a GiveSendGo

Who receives the money when it's for a group

The recipient must be 18 or older, live in the fundraiser's country, and have a bank account there. One named person takes that role and completes identity verification before any transfer, so a fundraiser for a family, a block, or a committee still runs through one accountable individual. Say in your story who that person is and what the money pays for. GiveSendGo requires every fundraiser to be transparent about how funds will be used, and it's the first thing your neighbors will want to know anyway.

If an organization is receiving the funds, the person filling out the recipient form can choose the Business bank account type, entering the legal business name and the organization's own bank details, so the money lands in the organization's account rather than a personal one. Pick the country carefully either way, because the recipient's country can't be changed after the fundraiser is created.

What it costs to run one

GiveSendGo doesn't take a cut. There's no platform fee. What's deducted is the payment processor's fee: 2.7% + 30¢ per gift for US fundraisers, 3.5% + 30¢ outside the US. On a $100 gift to a US fundraiser, $97 reaches you.

Here's how that lands on the gifts you're most likely to see:

One more setting to know about before you publish. When you create a fundraiser you can pledge a percentage of what you raise to GiveSendGo, and if you set it, that amount is added on top of each gift and shown to your givers at checkout, so some read it as a platform fee. It's editable any time in your fundraiser Settings, and it only applies to gifts that come in after you change it.

When the money reaches you

Your first gift becomes available 5 days after it's received. Every gift after that becomes available on a rolling 3-day basis. Once you request a transfer, it typically lands in your bank within 2 to 3 business days. Non-USD transfers can take longer. Request transfers from the Transfers tab whenever funds are available, or set them to go out weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. A manual transfer sends your whole available balance, and once one is approved you wait 24 hours before requesting another.

Three things have to be in place before the first transfer can go out:

• A named recipient, 18 or older, living in the fundraiser's country.
• A connected bank account, checking rather than savings for US recipients.
• An uploaded ID, since verification has to clear first.

Start a GiveSendGo

If you came here to give

Search by the fundraiser's title, the recipient's name, or the creator's name to find a local one, and if the site search doesn't surface it, search the group's name plus "GiveSendGo" on Google. Every gift runs through a PCI Level 1-certified payment processor, the highest tier in the payments industry, and card details are never stored on GiveSendGo's own servers. You can check "Hide My Name from Public View" and appear as an Anonymous Giver on the page, though the creator and recipient still see your name and email so they can thank you. You can send a prayer along with the gift, and plenty of people do.

A pantry or a shelter can sound charitable and still not be a deductible gift, so know this before you file your taxes. Nothing given on GiveSendGo is tax-deductible unless it goes through GiveSendGo Charities, the 501(c)(3). That includes the Giver Army, which is Charities' recurring giving program. The one exception is a recipient that is itself a verified 501(c)(3). GiveSendGo itself is not a 501(c)(3), does not verify any recipient's tax status, and does not issue tax receipts for a personal fundraiser. When the recipient is a nonprofit, the receipt comes from them, not from us.

Support a local fundraiser listed on this page