This week’s GoFundMe user story comes to us from Sandra Rizkallah of Needham, MA. Sandra is the organizer behind Plugged-In Teen Band Program

Through GoFundMe, we raised over $4,000 in three weeks…and we still have 2 days left of our fundraiser! And, this is more than $1,000 over our goal! Raising that much money in such a short amount of time is amazing, but what makes GoFundMe even more incredible is how easy it is, how much fun it is, how it brings an organization’s community together and how it lets you tell your story with people all around the world.

We are raising funds for the Plugged In Teen Band Program in Needham, MA, a non-profit teen rock band program teaching kids about using music to create positive change in the world. In addition to weekly classes, songwriting workshops and community performances, three times a year students perform in benefit concerts that raise money for causes and organizations chosen by the students themselves. Plugged In provides a nurturing and supportive community to which young musicians feel a sense of belonging, an opportunity to express and be acknowledged for their musical interests and a chance to use their music to help others around the world.

Every spring, we have a student fundraiser. This year, the fundraiser is called Plugged In Live: A Concert Streamed Around the World. On May 28, over an 8-hour period, 32 teen bands in Plugged In will be performing in 10-minute increments at the studios of Young Broadcasters of America (YBA), a television studio run by teens. The performances will be streamed live on the internet and will be available via pay per view around the world. The concert will also be available to download from the internet after the event via pay-per-view. In addition to “Plugged In Live” being an exciting event for Plugged In and YBA students and their families and friends, it is also a very critical fundraiser for Plugged In. Plugged In students are using their talent, love of music and social networks to raise money to ensure the sustainability of Plugged In and that Plugged In’s high-quality band program continues to be available to teens, regardless of their ability to pay.

Our Youth Board decided to have a pre-event fundraiser and set a goal to raise $3,000 before the May 28 event. Since Plugged In Live is a concert streamed on the internet, it seemed like a great idea to have an online fundraising campaign. We looked at all of the different online fundraising companies and we chose GoFundMe. It seemed the most user friendly in that we didn’t have to meet our goal in order to receive donated funds and we didn’t have to offer rewards to the donors.

Our GoFundMe experience exceeded our expectations. With GoFundMe, our teen students were able to use email and facebook, something they use everyday, to fundraise for Plugged In and give back to a program that means so much to them. It was an empowering experience for them and for our whole community. We had music friends all over the world donating and sharing our GoFundMe page link…from London to Zimbabwe to Germany….even Algeria! It was also inspiring to read the comments of the donors…who were able to let everyone know what our program means to them.

Another aspect of GoFundMe that we loved was being able to post videos and photos. Each day we posted a video of a different student talking about what Plugged In means to them. We have heard from many of our donors how much they enjoyed this…and our students loved being able to tell their stories to our supporters.

We look forward to using GoFundMe again next year at our 2012 Plugged In Live event!

Thank you, GoFundMe!

- Sandra Rizkallah

Plugged-In Teen Band Program
Needham, MA
GoFundMe Page: http://www.gofundme.com/PluggedInBand

Durango Herald staff writer Emery Cowen covers GoFundMe – excerpt and links below:

Faced with tragedies, people turn to social media for support

Dawn Mayberry talks about her fight with cancer in her La Plata County home. Her daughter Jasmine has set up a webpage on gofundme.com to raise money to help pay for her treatments. ”It flipped me up like a piece of paper,” Dawn Mayberry said of the disease. She said she has been humbled by the donations she has received through the GoFundMe webpage, some from as far away as Australia.

Read the full article here. You can visit Dawn Mayberry’s GoFundMe page and make a donation below:

As of 10:10 AM PST, GoFundMe’s hosting service has resolved the outage. Thanks for everyone’s comments & emails. We appreciate it!

Thanks again!

http://status.mosso.com/2011/04/cloud-sites-php-wc1dfw-degraded.html

Our sincere apologies – GoFundMe is currently experiencing temporary outages. Our hosting company should have the problem resolved soon: http://status.rackspacecloud.com/

Stop the Presses! GoFundMe users are getting some decent news coverage these days. Just check out a few recent stories below. Also, be sure to let us know if your GoFundMe story gets some press as well!

From Patch.com on March 23, 2011

Teen’s Walk Across America Needs Support by Nancy Woo
This mother’s son, whose vivacious spirit seems to take after her own, hopes to one day start his own non-profit organization for Breast Cancer research and awareness so that he can be sure that funds are going to the right places. As of now, he is using gofundme.com to raise money for the cause as he seeks sponsorship and builds relationships with organizations.
You can view this user’s GoFundMe pages here & here.

From Cincinnati.com on March 25, 2011

Locals Find Funding Online by Laura Baverman:
Individuals can raise funds for travel plans, college courses or mission trips through GoFundMe. Matthew Dooley, a marketer with American Modern Insurance Group, is using the site to help raise money to attend a conference called Mashable Connect in May.
You can view this user’s GoFundMe page here.

From Examiner.com on March 28, 2011

UFO Ranch achieves fundraising target in 48 hours by Jon Kelly
James Gilliland, founder of Enlightened Contact with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, described the “extreme gratitude” he felt having launched the effort only 48 hours earlier.
You can view this user’s GoFundMe page here.

Here it is! We recently received a couple of heart-warming messages from GoFundMe users Jennifer Haron and Heather McCabe. Below are their comments along with links to their GoFundMe pages. Thanks again you two!

Jennifer says:
“Wow!  I had 3 months to raise $1,000 in order to surprise my husband with a trip to NYC for his birthday.  We are 3 weeks away from our deadline, and we have raised 92% of our goal!  There is no way on EARTH I could have done this without GoFundMe.com!  Thank you so much for making it possible!  I’m telling everyone to use this site!”

Learn more by visiting Jennifer’s page: http://funds.gofundme.com/1opu8

Heather says:
“I’ve been rescuing Special Needs pets for 12 years and for the first time, I found myself unable to come up with the money for a much needed surgery, a friend suggested GoFundMe so I set up a page figuring every little bit helps… my goal was $1,000 for the double eye surgery Nikki needed – I am pleased to say it took only a week to reach that goal and our final total is $1,240! Nikki has had her surgery and is now pain free : ) Thank you so very much from Nikki and I.”

You can learn more at Heather’s page: http://funds.gofundme.com/2ce3s

Do you have a GoFundMe success story that you would like to share? Contact Us!

After yesterday’s little hiccup, PayPal is back up & running smoothly. A link to PayPal’s live status page is below.

Thanks everybody!

https://www.x.com/view-blog-post.jspa?blog=2281&blogPost=4828

March 4, 2011: Hello GoFundMe Users – PayPal is experiencing intermittent outages that will cause some donation attempts to fail.

The GoFundMe team has released a helpful message that will be displayed to donors who are affected by this outage. Based on our stats, the issue appears to affect 20-30% of donation attempts – with most attempts going through successfully on the second try.

We’ll post another update as soon as PayPal releases a fix for this issue. You can learn more at PayPal’s Live Status blog below:

https://www.x.com/view-blog-post.jspa?blog=2281&blogPost=4828

We apologize for this problem!

Thank you,

GoFundMe Team

Finding the perfect photo for your GoFundMe page just got easier. Beginning today you can connect to Facebook and select a photo from one of your albums. Here’s how it works:

1. Click the Facebook photo link from the ‘Edit’ tab.
2. Allow the GoFundMe App to access your Facebook account.
3. Choose an album from the list.
4. Click the photo you would like to use.

Easily access Facebook photos from GoFundMe.

The photo you select will then appear at the top of your online donation page. You can remove or change this photo at any time. The feature is only available for your main page photo at the moment, but stay tuned for improvements that will allow you to add Facebook photos to the ‘message’  and ‘updates’ area of your page as well.

Questions, comments or feedback? As always, contact us!

You’ve probably already noticed that your GoFundMe Dashboard got a shiny new tab a couple weeks back. After some tweaks and improvements, we’re officially announcing ‘multi-page’ support for GoFundMe account holders.

The new feature lets you raise money for up to 5 different things. For example, you could be raising money for your kid’s sports team while also collecting money for a friend’s birthday party – at the same time!

Note: This feature doesn’t let you add multiple pages to a single initiative – that would get crazy.

Adding a new donation page is easy. Just click on the ‘My Pages’ tab on the right side of your GoFundMe Dashboard. You also have quick access to each and every page you’ve created from this menu.

Enjoy!

Click the 'My Pages' tab to create a new page or access an existing one.