The British are kinder than ever! says GoFundMe boss

The season of giving is in full swing when I meet Tim Cadogan, the chief executive of American fundraising giant GoFundMe. 

It is the busiest time of the year for the donation platform as people imbued with festive cheer and goodwill are inclined to open their wallets more than usual for good causes.

But while donations keep pouring in, there is a disturbing aspect to this year’s trend, notably the ever-increasing amount of fundraisers being set up to help people pay for everyday living costs as prices have soared.

‘Fundraising for rent, utility bills, gas bills, food and car fuel, just daily living expenses, has gone up by about 20 per cent,’ the Dorset-born US executive tells me, noting that the reliance on the generosity of strangers to afford bills is not just a UK phenomenon.

‘We’re seeing it across all our major markets, including the US. It’s been like that for two to three years now,’ Cadogan says. ‘Clearly it’s unfortunate.’

Four of the six most common words used in fundraisers this year on the site related to food, bills, homes, and work.

Monthly bills were also the second-fastest growing category of fundraiser in 2025, a grim reminder of just how intense the cost-of-living crisis has become for many families.

Cadogan also notes that there has been an increase in local businesses seeking donations to avoid closure as higher costs have begun to bite. 

The 55-year-old says: ‘We are seeing beloved local businesses such as bookshops and cafes that are in a crunch but people don’t want them to go away. That is a theme for sure.’

In a sign of how prevalent the use of his platform has become, Cadogan says politicians and other policymakers now request information from GoFundMe’s vast trove of data to help assess what is affecting society and, more importantly for them, voters.

Earlier this month he met Darren Jones, Keir Starmer’s policy enforcer and a close ally of the Prime Minister.

‘We want to share what we’re seeing and we want people to understand,’ Cadogan says.

He studied at the London School of Economics and Oxford before moving to the US and co-founding the free digital and mobile advertising service OpenX.

Now, as the boss of the world’s largest donation website, he knows more about the true state of the global economy than most.

He took over the business in March 2020, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, which ravaged the global economy. 

Cadogan has previously described those first months as the most challenging of his career.

His tenure has since been dominated by surging inflation, conflicts in Europe and the Middle East as well as a litany of natural disasters, all of which have pushed more and more people towards GoFundMe to seek assistance from others.

Cadogan himself came perilously close to relying on his own platform at the start of this year when on January 7 his home narrowly escaped the devastating wildfires that swept through Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife and three children.

In the end the event sparked the largest donation he himself has ever made on the platform, about $5,000 (£3,700), towards relief efforts for the local community to help those who had not been lucky enough to have homes that escaped the blaze.

It culminated in GoFundMe’s most generous day of the year on January 10, when £6.2million in donations was raised in 24 hours, primarily for victims of the fires.

Cadogan himself has worked for the local Sierra Madre Search and Rescue Team, which helps people lost in the wilderness.

GoFundMe tries to attune itself to what Cadogan calls ‘community fabric’, when local people come together to support neighbours or good causes in the area.

He says this trend helped Liverpool become the most generous British city on the platform this year as a result of ongoing efforts to support victims of the Southport stabbings in July last year.

‘While those fundraisers are for specific events, they are also a representation of community spirit. So we try and help those efforts and amplify them,’ he says.

But with the cost-of-living crisis continuing to put household budgets under pressure, are people less inclined to donate than before?

Cadogan says that, in fact, the opposite is true.

‘It is something of a paradox. When times are tougher, most people give more. We saw this during the pandemic. It was a very difficult time for a lot of people, but fundraising went up,’ he says.

He notes that over the past year 5.7million people donated in the UK, a 100,000 increase on the previous year, with the average donation amounting to about £45.

‘Generosity keeps going up,’ he says, ‘and we’re trying to make it easier by giving people the tools and a trusted platform to set up fundraisers and give money.’ 

Despite its stated ambitions, the company often attracts criticism for profiting from charitable donations, with its ‘tipping function’ a frequent target for complaints.

Cadogan pushes back on allegations that, as a for-profit business, it exploits people’s generosity to make money. 

He says the company’s only cut is a 2.9 per cent ‘payment processing cost’ plus 25p, which it deducts from each donation made to a fundraiser.

It means that a £100 donation results in £96.85 being received by the fundraiser, with the company taking the remaining £3.15.

After that, he says, the donor will decide if they want to leave a tip for the firm, emphasising they can opt to tip zero if they wish.

‘Millions do and millions don’t,’ he says of leaving a tip, adding: ‘We think it gives complete choice and is completely transparent.

‘We want to make sure money goes to the recipient. If someone wants to pay us something, we’re grateful for that. But we want the British public to be able to say, “Right now I don’t have the extra money. I want to give what I’ve got to the person who needs it.”’

As GoFundMe is a private business, it does not publicly disclose how much profit it makes.

Its owners are thought to be a consortium of venture capital funds including Accel, which also backs financial technology firms such as the banking app Monzo and shopping website Etsy.

Does the company try to make money in other ways? Such as selling data in the form of its vast trove of fundraising information?

‘We do not sell data. We do not run advertising. We don’t do anything else. We have one thing we do, which is we help people to help each other,’ Cadogan says.

And does he wish society would reach a point where fundraising platforms such as GoFundMe would not need to exist?

‘I don’t think that’s realistic,’ he says, adding that he believes it would be a very sad world where we don’t ask each other for help.’

Cadogan adds: ‘It’s one of the things that defines us as humans, that we help each other.

‘There are periods in our lives when we need help. And there are times when we can give help.

‘If there were no ways where people can help each other. That would be a shame.’