Note from the Publisher: Stars with a social conscience? I think we all know that the "social conscience" thing goes hand in hand with celebrity these days, but you may not know that charity crowdfunding site was co-founded by actor/celebrity Ed Norton, his wife Shauna Robertson and brothers Jeffrey and Robert Wolfe, entrepreneurs behind the Moosejaw online retail site. News broke this week that Detroit-based Crowdrise was acquired by the number one social funding platform on the planet - Redwood City-based GoFundMe. The inevitable fintech consolidation movement is continuing its march - this time in the crowdinvesting arena.
"GoFundMe, the world's largest social fundraising platform, today announced that it had acquired CrowdRise, the leading online fundraising platform for charities and non-profits.
"There is a perfect synergy between GoFundMe's brand of person to person social fundraising and CrowdRise's expertise in fundraising for charities through peer-to-peer, race events and corporate campaigns," said GoFundMe CEO Rob Solomon. "GoFundMe aims to be the giving layer of the Internet. By joining forces with CrowdRise, we can offer both people and organizations the right fundraising strategy for any sort of cause they care passionately about."
Going forward, CrowdRise will focus on fundraising for charity and fundraising for individuals will be directed to GoFundMe. CrowdRise will remain the same brand its users and partners love and trust, and continue to deliver its unique blend of services to its customers.
"Our entire team at CrowdRise is incredibly excited to be a part of the GoFundMe revolution because we authentically share their vision," said Robert Wolfe, CEO of CrowdRise. "We really believe that this combination is going to comprehensively rewrite the way the people take care of each other and act on their desires to make the world a better place. The scale of what we can do together is truly awesome."
"From our first conversations, I knew CrowdRise and GoFundMe would be a natural combination," said CrowdRise Founder Edward Norton. "We share the same conviction that there needs to be a platform specific to people's passion to support causes just as much as there are platforms for their social lives, their business lives, and anything else. GoFundMe has built one of the most powerful tools for social good ever and we are so psyched to join forces with them."
Since it was launched in 2010, more than $3 billion has been raised on GoFundMe from our community of more than 25 million donors. To date, there have been more than 2 million campaigns on GoFundMe.
CrowdRise was founded in 2010 by actor/activist Edward Norton, producer/activist Shauna Robertson, and Robert and Jeffrey Wolfe. They have over 1 million members and 20,000 charities on the platform and CrowdRise's campaigns have raised over $500 million for non-profit organizations.
In addition to supporting people's individual campaigns for nonprofits, CrowdRise is the fundraising platform for many of the top endurance events in the country, including the Boston Marathon, New York City Marathon, Chicago Marathon, Ironman and Tough Mudder, along with thousands of small and medium size events.
In addition to providing online fundraising infrastructure for some of the largest charities in the world like American Cancer Society, Red Cross, UNICEF and Free the Children, CrowdRise builds the charitable donation layer for over a dozen of the largest event registration platforms such as Active Network and Eventbrite. CrowdRise powers charitable fundraising for media partners like CNN and the Huffington Post and also works with dozens of corporations like Revlon, Allstate and Quicken Loans to leverage their charitable giving dollars in fundraising challenges."
Source: PRNewsire