MemberDrive and GoFundMe are both online fundraising platforms that allow individuals and organizations to receive donations for causes, campaigns, and projects.

Note: all online fundraising platforms charge a standard 2.9% + $0.30 base fee for processing credit card payments (2.2% if that organization is a verified charity via Stripe), so the pricing here is anything in addition to that standard fee.

MemberDrive: 1%

GoFundMe: Two options: 1) GoFundMe Charity adds a 3% additional platform fee, 2) GoFundMe individual adds no additional fee but your donors are solicited to pay money to GoFundMe.

Result: MemberDrive comes out ahead for charities, non-profits, and organizations, since GoFundMe Charity takes a 3x larger cut of your donors' donations compared with MemberDrive.

For individuals raising money for medical issues or other personal needs, GoFundMe individual is better to use.

MemberDrive: Nonprofits of all sizes

GoFundMe: Individuals raising money for medical or other personal needs

MemberDrive: Leaderboard gamification, Pledges, Member Content Updates

GoFundMe: Mobile app, Update donors, Social media sharing, custodial fundraising

Result: GoFundMe does not require that the users raising funds have a Stripe account, but instead it receives the contributions and then the user can withdraw those funds to their bank account.

This is a positive feature for Individuals raising money (for medical and other needs), but a decided negative for organizations, especially non-profits, who can and should have their own Stripe account that allows them control and custody of their funds.

MemberDrive: Positive word-of-mouth reviews from users

GoFundMe: 1.5 out of 5 stars on TrustPilot

Result: MemberDrive has a smaller but devoted following of those who use its service. Donorbox has only a 1.5 star rating on TrustPilot, which that site classifies as "Bad."

Reviewers on TrustPilot complain that they have had problems with withdrawing their funds from GoFundMe, and that customer support is badly lacking.

GoFundMe also garnered negative publicity when the Canadian Truckers protest raised millions of dollars through the site, but then GoFundMe first froze those funds, then said they would redirect the funds to a different, completely unrelated group, then when people loudly complained, they were forced to give people their money back. 

Bottom line was: the actual Canadian Truckers did not receive the millions of dollars that donors intended to give to them.

GoFundMe is a well-known leader in the crowd-funding space. The positive of that is: they have name recognition and people feel more confident donating through such a site.

The drawback is, they are so large that support is lacking and because they are a custodial platform (meaning, donations first go to GoFundMe who only then chooses to release the funds to the individual or organization), that they have the ability to block the withdrawal of the donated funds.

MemberDrive is non-custodial, meaning your donors' contributions go directly to your Stripe account, not to ours. MemberDrive thus provides more confidence that you will receive the money donors give to you.

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