Anybody have experience with "gofundme"

[alittleslower]

I am thinking of using the website gofundme to raise money for a wheelchair van. I've done the typical research on the website I've read the pros and the cons of it. I'm curious if anyone on here has had any experience with it as a way to raise a rather unfortunate large sum of money.
Thank you very much for any input you can give me.

[Segreto]

Beware they take a percentage. About 8-10% from memory.

[SCI-Nurse]

Also, be aware that funds collected in the wrong way can be considered income by programs such as Social Security and Medicaid, which can negatively effect your eligibility for such programs. You may also want to look into working with an organization such as https://helphopelive.org/ (formerly the National Transplant Assistance Fund or NTAF) as they can help you set up your campaign in such a way that it is not considered income.

Also, if you are working, or considering returning to work or school, your state Dept. of Vocational Rehabilitation may help with a van purchase. Have you looked into this?

(KLD)

[mrb]

They do take a % as does the payment company. I have a trust fund setup by friends and gofundme provided a useful place to centralise fund raising for an off road wheelchair, whilst we didn't quite reach the $20k needed we weren't far away as friends did a number of different activities and could point donors to the page.
I think we were one of the more successful campaigns as gofundme asked to use the campaign for their PR.
A lot will depend upon your circle of friends, I was relatively high profile in the industry I worked and had a large friend network many of whom wanted to help out. We started a 2nd campaign to raise money for an FES bike and this has been slower as we've already hit friends once, you can only get so much support before folk tire of donating all the time.
Gofundme worked for me but we didn't explore alternatives which might have lower fees and we didn't get any donations from people outside my network of friends so it probably didn't matter which site we used.