Emergency Fundraisers

After a fire, a crash, or a storm

An emergency fundraiser can help cover the costs that come when life turns upside down, costs that don't wait for an insurance check: somewhere to sleep, clothes, a car, a hospital bill, and the rest of what it takes to put a household back together. Emergencies are common reasons people raise funds on GiveSendGo. The page you create is a fundraiser, the person who sets it up is the fundraiser creator, and whoever's bank account receives the money is the recipient. Those last two don't have to be the same person. So if the family it happened to can't face any of this yet, you can set the fundraiser up and name them as the recipient, and the money goes straight to their account.

How to ask for donations after a house fire

Say what happened and name what the money covers this week, plainly and in your own words, then ask directly. Our help desk names these key elements: a realistic goal, a specific breakdown of the costs, your own story with a direct ask, photos or a short video, updates as things change, and sharing it more than once instead of posting once.

• Sign up with your legal name, your email, a password, and a phone number to verify.
• Pick the recipient's country first, because it's locked once the fundraiser is created and the only fix is starting over with a new one.
• Set a goal and choose the Emergency category, then write your title and the story.
• Add a photo of what you're describing, and publish.
• Add the recipient's details so the money can move: a bank account in the fundraiser's country, a valid tax ID, a government-issued photo ID with date of birth, a phone number, and a residential address that isn't a PO box.

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What people give is a gift

There's nothing to repay, no interest, and no application to qualify for. Nothing in signing up or in adding a recipient asks about your credit, and you don't need a nonprofit or an EIN either. Anyone can start a fundraiser.

What it costs

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. On a $25 gift, $24.03 reaches you. Outside the US, that $100 gift lands at $96.20, and non-USD fundraisers can also pick up currency exchange fees set by the processor.

GiveSendGo runs on the optional tip at checkout. Every giver sees a suggested amount they can set to anything, including $0, and it covers our operating costs and mission outreach. So no percentage of what you raise after an emergency comes to us.

Before you publish, check your optional giving settings. If you set a percentage to GiveSendGo while creating the fundraiser, that amount is added on top of each gift and shown to the people giving at checkout, and some of them read it as a platform fee. You can edit it anytime from your fundraiser's Settings.

When the money reaches you, and what has to be in place first

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 a transfer yourself 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 you wait 24 hours after one is approved before requesting another. In the US, use a checking account, because transfers are sent as checking transactions and a savings account may be rejected by the bank.

• The recipient gets verified before any money moves. They need to be 18 or older, live in the fundraiser's country, and provide a bank account there, a valid tax ID, a government-issued photo ID with date of birth, a phone number, and a residential address that isn't a PO box.
• Review starts once that ID is uploaded and the fundraiser has received its first gift, and it usually finishes 1 to 2 business days after that.
• Nobody is exempt, because identity verification through the payment partner is a standard financial-industry requirement.
• The transfer status tells you where things stand. Processing means it was accepted and is moving. Paused means something needs review, and it resumes once that's resolved. Transferred means it's with your bank, which posts it on its own schedule.

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If you came here to help a family

Plenty of people come to a category like this one to give rather than to raise, and the fundraisers listed above are the real ones. A fundraiser only appears in a category listing after it has been published 5 days and raised $100 or more in online gifts, so nothing here went up an hour ago.

You can leave a comment with your gift, and it stays on the page beside it. Card details run through a PCI Level 1 certified processor, the top tier in the payments industry, and are never stored on GiveSendGo's own servers. Your name and email are never sold or passed to anyone else.

Support a family on this page