Gofundme - really?

[mollyanna58]

I donated to a local gofundme campaign.   The site then showed me some other local campaigns, mostly the usual stuff: young father died suddenly; woman left abusive situation; greedy couple wants other people to pay for their wedding.

One really caught my attention.  A local yoga place is changing hands, and the new and old owners are asking for $35,000. to pay a government "mandage".  I assume they mean mandate. 

I know this business.  The old owner has gotten in trouble before for not paying various taxes.  The only government mandate that I can think of for selling a business is that she still owes taxes and the new owner won't complete the deal until those taxes are paid.

Even if it is some other government involvement, would you contribute to someone else who wanted to buy a business?  I wouldn't.  So far, people have kicked in about $900.00.

[resolution]

I would probably contribute for someone to open a good greek restaurant in my area. I would continue to contribute regularly after they were open too!

[Deleted]

I don't ever pay attention to Gofundme so I went there to see what was being solicited in my area.

What I found out was that one of my former students lost her father a few weeks ago.  They are trying to raise $20,000 for her to finish her college education and asking for contributions in lieu of flowers.  They had raised $16,000 so far.  She is in her junior year.  He had no life insurance.  

Don't get me wrong; it's a very worthy cause.  But it also sharply contrasted with others trying to raise $$$ for cancer victims, etc. in our area.  Most of them have raised less than $1000 but had more people donating.

It made me reflect that often these campaigns reflect how much money your friends have.

[alabamagal]

I think the business gofundme is just greed.

We had a request to help fund college, although it was old fashioned family request not online. It was death oh spouse of DH cousin who he is not close with and for kids in early 20s we have never met. And the request was "instead of flowers contribute to college fund". I'm not a big fan of spending lots of money on flowers, and I would rather give to college fund. We sent small check anyway.

[naughtybear]

I dislike it.

[Deleted]

Nov 5, 2016 8:48:22 GMT -5 alabamagal said:

I think the business gofundme is just greed.

We had a request to help fund college, although it was old fashioned family request not online. It was death oh spouse of DH cousin who he is not close with and for kids in early 20s we have never met. And the request was "instead of flowers contribute to college fund". I'm not a big fan of spending lots of money on flowers, and I would rather give to college fund. We sent small check anyway.

Gofundme is making a crap ton of money too.  I don't know if everyone donating knows that 8% of every dollar they donate goes to Gofundme and not the cause.  I'll hand somebody $20 instead.

[Deleted]

The $35K they're trying to raise for back taxes is really a subsidy of what they paid for the business.  Let's say the business would have been worth $50K without the tax liens.  They probably agreed to buy it for something like $15K knowing the tax lien would have to be paid.  So, they got a discount.  Now they want their friends and family to chip in to cover the $35K.  I don't think so.  If they had a viable business proposition they could borrow the $35K.

If they can't tell the difference between a "mandage" and a "mandate", though, I'm not sure I would loan them anything.

ETA:  I agree with southernsusana about contributions being a function of how much money your friends have.  I checked the site for my Zip code and some poor family who wants to send the remains of their late mother back to the old country in accordance with her wishes has raised $1,000 of their $5,000 goal.   A young, photogenic lawyer who's battling really bad brain cancer has raised $73K.  No reason given why she needs that much (No insurance?  Costs of traveling to and from MD Anderson?  Lost income?), but what a difference.

I know that different cultures have different attitudes about disposition of the remains of a loved one, but my family would be too practical to squander $5,000 to repatriate remains.  DH and I always cheerfully agreed that if one of met our demise on one of our exotic expeditions, the other would return home with the cremains.

[Lizard Queen]

We got a gofundme request a few years ago from DH's mom for one of his cousins that had an apartment fire and lost their stuff.  I said that I'm not sending money so they can buy new stuff when I have a basement full of household crap they can use (from when his mom and dad divorced and FIL remarried). I've never met these cousins and probably never will.

There were a couple more recent requests for a cousin and niece (cancer and freak accident).  I just donated to them directly, as did my mom.

[TheOtherMe]

I will only donate if I know the people and the circumstances.  I then send $ directly since Gofundme takes such a large cut.

[sesfw]

send $ directly since Gofundme takes such a large cut.


We did that when our niece needed expensive medical treatment.  She lived on the east coast and we are out west.  Their neighbors opened a Gofundme account for her so we sent our check to her and her family.

[happyhoix]

I'm leery of strangers asking for money through gofundme.

We've had a couple incidents around here where people claimed to be undergoing hard times when they were just scam artists. One woman claimed she had cancer and had a bunch of people giving her money while he coworkers were donating their vacation/sick days to her. She even shaved her head. Turns out she was perfectly healthy.

I give money directly to people I know are going through hard times. DH donating a week of his vacation to a coworker he knew was sick. We donate through our church and to charities like the food bank and the salvation army - but not directly to people we don't know.

[daisy]

The only GoFundMe I've ever contributed to was for a barn cat that got caught in a local barn fire.  It apparently escaped the burning barn and was lying under a tree, crying in pain.  A member of a local rescue group had gone to see if they could help get animals (sheep barn) out of the barn and she saw him lying there and everyone at the fire told her to leave it and let it die (UGH).  The sheep didn't make it but she took the cat to a local vet to see if he could be saved.  The fire had turned his white coat orange and burned his ears and face pretty badly but she thought he had a chance.  

DH is a firefighter and he knew of an FD that had adopted a rescue cat who'd lost his ears in a house burn (plus DH is the local crazy cat lady) so he immediately had a desire to donate to the vet costs for this cat.  The rescue lady has posted updates and it's so amazing how well the cat has recovered.  She was asking for $1200 or something like that for the vet costs and before she had a chance to check back on it, the fund had blown up to $3600.  She shut it down at that point and said the overage would go to the local animal rescue. 

I don't get the whole, "help pay for my wedding" thing at all.....and would never donate to that; get a better/second job or go to the JP.  Also not sure that'd we'd ever donate again, except maybe to another injured animal situation. 

[Deleted]

Our local (privately owned) theater wanted community members to raise funds so they could buy a digital projector. Was the theater able to write that off and take the depreciation expense if they didn't pay for it themselves?

I wasn't sure what to think about that.

If the factory down the street needed a new welder, would they ask the community members to buy it?

[souldoubt]

Nov 7, 2016 12:33:38 GMT -5 daisy said:

The only GoFundMe I've ever contributed to was for a barn cat that got caught in a local barn fire.  It apparently escaped the burning barn and was lying under a tree, crying in pain.  A member of a local rescue group had gone to see if they could help get animals (sheep barn) out of the barn and she saw him lying there and everyone at the fire told her to leave it and let it die (UGH).  The sheep didn't make it but she took the cat to a local vet to see if he could be saved.  The fire had turned his white coat orange and burned his ears and face pretty badly but she thought he had a chance.  

This is something I would gladly donate to.  Her act, the fact that she took the gofundme down once there was enough for the operations and donated the rest speaks volumes about her and the world needs more people like her.  I've got no problem donating to causes that support animals or children because when they're living on the streets, malnourished, getting abused, etc. they don't have a lot of options and can't change their situation.  Able bodied adults who want me to fund their wedding, college, travel and so on are on their own.