GoFundMe

Profile (continued)

Under Solomon's leadership, GoFundMe pursued an acquisitive growth strategy in the charitable-giving space. In January 2017, GoFundMe acquired CrowdRise, a for-profit charitable crowdfunding platform co-founded by actor Edward Norton, producer Shauna Robertson, and Moosejaw founders Robert and Jeffrey Wolfe; the deal both consolidated the charity-fundraising market and brought Norton onto GoFundMe's board, where he remains. Later in 2017, GoFundMe eliminated its mandatory 5% platform fee on personal campaigns, moving to an optional donor-tip model — a major strategic and PR shift that cemented its lead over rivals like YouCaring and Fundly. In March 2018, GoFundMe acquired YouCaring, a competing donation-based crowdfunding platform (itself having previously acquired GiveForward in 2017), further consolidating the medical/personal-cause crowdfunding category.

In January 2020, Tim Cadogan — a former Yahoo advertising executive and co-founder/CEO of ad-tech company OpenX, with degrees from the London School of Economics, Oxford, and Stanford's MBA program — succeeded Rob Solomon as CEO of GoFundMe (Solomon moved to a board/executive chairman role and remains a board member). Cadogan has led the company through the COVID-19 pandemic era, during which GoFundMe saw enormous surges in fundraising activity (e.g., the George Floyd family fund raising $7 million in its first week in 2020) and was named by Time in 2025 as one of the magazine's 100 most influential people.

GoFundMe's most significant recent acquisition came in May 2022, when it acquired Classy, a San Diego-based nonprofit fundraising SaaS company founded in 2006 by Scot Chisholm, Pat Walsh, and Marshall Peden (the name a nod to the 'Stay classy, San Diego' line from Anchorman). Classy had raised roughly $166 million across Series B (2015, $18M, led by Mithril Capital and Salesforce Ventures), Series C (2016, $30M), and Series D (2021, $118M, at which point it became a Public Benefit Corporation) rounds, and served 2,500+ nonprofit clients including Teach for America, Girls Who Code, Malala Fund, and the World Food Programme. Classy's platform was folded into GoFundMe's offering and rebranded GoFundMe Pro, giving the combined company both a large consumer/personal fundraising business and an enterprise nonprofit SaaS business. Around the same period, GoFundMe.org was established/operated as a separate, affiliated 501(c)(3) nonprofit that runs programs like the Hardship Relief Fund and donation-matching initiatives, distinct from the for-profit GoFundMe, Inc. corporate entity.

GoFundMe has also weathered a number of controversies typical of an open donation platform at scale: content-moderation disputes (e.g., a 2015 suspension of a legal-defense fund for a bakery that refused to serve a same-sex couple, later reversed as policy in Nov 2017; a 2019 ban on anti-vaccine fundraisers that press found was imperfectly enforced; freezing donations to controversial campaigns such as The Grayzone's 2023 fund and the 2024 Luigi Mangione legal-defense campaigns); high-profile fraud cases (the 2017 Johnny Bobbitt 'homeless veteran' hoax, and the 2020-21 'We Build the Wall' fraud involving Brian Kolfage); and, most recently, an October 2025 controversy in which GoFundMe was reported (by KGO-TV/ABC7 and covered by the National Council of Nonprofits) to have auto-generated roughly 1.4 million nonprofit donation pages without the nonprofits' consent, prompting a public apology and policy changes.

As of the mid-2020s, GoFundMe reports (per its own past public statements, cited in Wikipedia and elsewhere) that its platform has facilitated over $30 billion in total donations since founding (through early 2024) from more than 150 million donors, though these are platform gross-fundraising figures, not company revenue. Estimated company revenue and headcount figures from third-party data providers (e.g., Growjo) put GoFundMe at roughly 966 employees and approximately $180 million in estimated annual revenue as of the mid-2020s, though these third-party estimates are not officially disclosed by the company and should be treated as approximate. GoFundMe remains a private company; there is no confirmed IPO, and no dollar-verified valuation more recent than the 2015 $600 million figure could be located.

Go-to-market

Individuals raising money for personal causes (medical, memorial, emergency, community); nonprofits and charities (via GoFundMe Charity/GoFundMe.org and GoFundMe Pro/Classy); event- and cause-based fundraisers; corporate giving/CSR partners.

Ownership

private