GOFUNDME - Fundraising for Personal Purposes

 

There are several world-famous crowdfunding platforms. take first place in projects on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. After successful collections, it is implied that the project must be completed.

 

But there are another type of fee - for personal purposes. The first place among such sites is occupied by GoFundMe. “People use GoFundMe to raise money for weddings, funerals, and everything in-between'' [1]. And indeed, the kid is raising money for his first PC, a collection for a diesel engine for a motorhome, and the musician Michel was robbed of a MacBook.

 

In Russian sources [2] they write that the platform is global, and you can start collecting from anywhere in the world. If you live in the US, then you can get your money through the WePay payment system. All others work through PayPal. And if so, I also decided to try to organize a collection for personal purposes.

 

Want to know the answer right away?

 

 

My goal

For several months I have been developing a modular platform based on FPGAs, on the basis of which it will be possible to assemble digital and analog synthesizers. A lot of work has been done (mostly in the digital part), but there is even more left. However, musicians do not like "numbers", the synthesizer must be "analog". To do this, you need to make analog blocks: filters (VCF), and amplifiers (VCA). To debug these modules, an oscilloscope is very necessary, and my C1-99 oscilloscope, manufactured in 85, is already very bad (does not synchronize). That, in fact, is the goal - to raise funds for the purchase of an oscilloscope for the project.

 

Creating your own company

Creating your own company is very simple. Using the wizard, specify the amount, project name, and color. We connect with the account on Facebook, Twitter, and with contacts from our mail. This is followed by a description of what the company is about. Everything is very simple: a few clicks and the company is ready!

 

I was pleased with the opportunity to create a wishlist for my company:

 

Where do donors come from?

The platform immediately announces that your friends and friends of your friends are potential donors for your collection. Therefore, it is very important to announce the collection on your pages on social networks. The project should be known to as many people as possible. There is even a form for printing a paper ad.

 

What to do next?

In the process of gathering, it is imperative to keep the public informed and create news. With the help of the platform, this news can be automatically reposted to your Facebook and Twitter.

 

A Little Offtop: PayPal's Simple Alternative In the

Meanwhile, while people are getting paid safely on gofundme.com, I decided to check out the technical part of how withdrawals work. And what are the alternatives? As it turned out, any PayPal user can create a “Donate” button and hang it on their website. By this button, anyone (by simply indicating the card number) will be able to transfer any (or fixed) amount to your PayPal wallet. Testing showed that it is impossible to create a button by transferring a donation to USD. You can send only rubles.

 

For verification, we send ourselves 35 rubles. The money has been debited. A few minutes and now they have already arrived:

 

 

Press Accept. And we see a dialog in which we must choose: 1) accept and convert to USD; 2) accept in rubles and create an account in this currency; 3) turn the payment back

 

 

As a result, we get 23.63 rubles, minus 11.37 rubles in favor of PayPal. Fine! The method works.

 

Withdrawing Funds from GoFundMe

 

Faced with some dollar problems with PayPal, I decided to look at the technical part of withdrawing money from GoFundMe. As a payment system, I immediately put down the American WePay. No matter how I tried, I could not find a way to change it to PayPal. If nothing works, then you need to read the instructions. It turns out that GoFundMe has stopped working with PayPal. And I won’t be able to create WePay.

 

Moreover, my country - Russia - is not supported by the platform!

 

Frankly, I'm a little outraged that I can only find out about such technical problems deep in the documentation. What if a miracle and funds are collected? How to bring them out? I think that countrywide restrictions should be reported IMMEDIATELY.

 

And it was necessary to start with the FAQ geektimes.ru/post/242544 (TNX TO Beltoev)

Is my country supported?

Supported countries and currencies include the United States of America ($USD), the United Kingdom (£GBP), Canada ($CAD), Australia ($AUD), and some European Union countries that use the Euro as their official currency (€EUR ).