What’s New
Nearly $235 million was raised on GoFundMe for natural disaster relief this year.
“This is what we do,” CEO Tim Cadogan told Newsweek. “We exist to help people in those situations. We’re just glad that people trust us enough to put such important stories on GoFundMe and ask for help.”
Why It Matters
GoFundMe on Tuesday released its report about where donations were made throughout the year. More than 1.7 million people around the world donated to strengthen their own communities, GoFundMe found in its 2024 Year in Help review. With the exception of Giving Tuesday, the most generous day of the year globally was on October 1, which was mainly for relief after Hurricane Helene hit the southeastern U.S.
“We’re here to help people help each other in whatever they need,” Cadogan said. “Sometimes that’s in the most difficult of circumstances, so that could be a natural disaster or it could be a medical situation on one end of the human spectrum all the way through to moments when we come together and do amazing things that we’re celebrating like the Olympics or the Paralympics.”
GoFundMe
An average of two donations were made every second, according to the report.
The Year in Help report is informed by fundraisers on GoFundMe and through customers supported by its nonprofit fundraising software business, Classy from GoFundMe.
“It’s a very unusual view of some of the great things that people are doing for each other,” Cadogan said. “What we’ve observed is that moment of asking for help is hard, but once you’ve done it, so many people do want to help.”
What To Know
GoFundMe’s globally donation community connects nearly 190 million people and nonprofits. In 2024, more than 42 million donations were made to individuals and more than 23 million to nonprofits. One in three people were repeat donors on the site, and the average donation amount throughout the year was $77.
The Top 10 most generous states in 2024, ranked by the number of donors per capita, are:
- Vermont
- Massachusetts
- New Hampshire
- Rhode Island
- Maine
- Connecticut
- New Jersey
- Colorado
- Washington
- New York
The Top 10 most generous U.S. cities, ranked by the number of donors per capita with populations over 50,000 people, are closely related to the hurricane relief and need faced after hurricanes Helene and Milton. The Top 10 are:
- Marietta, Georgia
- Sarasota, Florida
- Fort Lauderdale, Florida
- Doral, Florida
- Alpharetta, Georgia
- Orlando, Florida
- Sandy Springs, Georgia
- Miami, Florida
- Greenville, South Carolina
- Boca Raton, Florida
“I think there’s just a very basic response to something [that] happened, that could have happened to me, I’d love to show my support in the fact that I can care and that I can make a difference,” Cadogan said. “It plays into a very deep, human element to all of us, which is this desire to help people that can cross boundaries and borders and cultures and religion.”
GoFundMe.org issued more than 2,000 grants and raised nearly $1.3 million to help provide direct relief to people in need after Helene and Milton.
Around the country, GoFundMe reported that fundraising for “building a brighter future” more than doubled since last year. Fundraising for “essential expenses” quadrupled.
The most generous individual donor, however, is from Australia. The person donated more than 1,300 times. Cadogan said the person, who would like to remain anonymous, donated to more than 500 fundraisers and made a lot of them recurring.
Globally, Ireland was this year’s most generous country, and Norway was the top country in supporting fundraisers beyond its borders.
Cadogan said that one of his favorite examples of GoFundMe support comes from his native U.K. In northern England, anti-immigrant riots destroyed a library in Liverpool.
“The community very quickly mobilized and raised £250,000,” he said. “The library just reopened last week. It’s a very powerful example of a bad difficult thing happened and the community showed amazing resilience in result of that.”
GoFundMe
What People Are Saying
In addition to hurricane and natural disaster relief, donors came together to raise more than $300 million for those impacted by the crisis in the Middle East.
When the World Central Kitchen group lost people on their team in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, more than 13,000 people showed up on GoFundMe to support the organization. World Central Kitchen became the largest GoFundMe for a nonprofit this year.
More than 15,500 donors contributed to make Olympic and Paralympic dreams come true in for the athletes and their families during the summer.
Thousands of educators also used the platform to raise funds for school supplies. Nearly 40,000 individuals and organizations received support from the GoFundMe community with tuition fees and scholarships.
What Happens Next
GoFundMe is going to focus more heavily on organizing for nonprofits in 2025, Cadogan said. There were more than 23 million donations to nonprofits, with “hundreds and thousands of those types of fundraisers” on the website, he said.
“It makes a big difference, and it makes people feel really connected to their community,” Cadogan said.
As part of a way to do this, Cadogan said he and his team are going to lean into Gen Z (ages 12 to 27) and their social media and sharing instincts. A Gen Z person is about 10 times more likely to share a fundraiser than a baby boomer (ages 60 to 78).
“Even if you don’t currently have a lot of money, you can make a lot of difference by sharing,” Cadogan said.
This will be done with more GoFundMe profiles, where donors can “express what they care about and build support,” he said.
In 2024, a person donated $5 to a hurricane relief fundraiser, but then she also shared the link to her network. That generated 4,000 other donors, equating to more than $100,000 in donations.
“That’s how powerful sharing can be,” Cadogan said. “And those two things go together. If you’re organizing for your local nonprofit and then you can enlist a bunch of your friends to tell that story, you can get a lot more support.”
