Anyone know anything about low-level friends-related crowdfunding

[andrewducker]

A friend of mine wants to raise a small amount of money from family/friends towards getting her husband a lovely gift. It's going to be a few thousand, and she doesn't expect the friends/family to pay for more than a percentage of it, and she's wondering if any of the usual crowdfunding sites are suitable for that.

Looking at Kickstarter/Indiegogo they both charge 5% + 3% for payment handling. Is there anything which might work better?

Are they suitable for "We're buying Bob a car, chip in if you feel like it!" types of things? Or is there a better alternative?

Comments

[cyprinella]

I've seen wedding gift websites where you could contribute X towards the honeymoon/large purchase. Here's a fee review http://destination-wedding-experts.com/2015/09/best-honeymoon-registry-for-you/ It's pretty hard to get around the fee thing because someone has to pay the credit card companies.

[redbird]

Does it have to be labeled "crowdfunding" and done online, or would she be willing to just send a note around saying something like "I want to get Frodo a gold-plated widget for his 33rd birthday. If you'd be willing to contribute and have your name on the card, please send me a check or a Visa, Amex, or $widget_store gift card, and I'll put the money toward that."

(I'm sure she can come up with better phrasing for the request, whether it's done this way or as crowdfunding.)

On the other hand, when someone I know was using one of those sites to raise money for her mortgage, I thought about just sending a check instead; it turned out that for a small donation, the difference between the percentage fee, and the price of the stamp, wasn't enough to justify in my mind asking the recipient to take an extra trip to the bank to deposit a check.

[questionablewit]

Since he won't read it here...I'm perfectly willing to send a note around (and it's actually to collect money for him to undertake a creative project that would otherwise be undoable, rather than to get a shiny thing), just trying to figure out the best way to go about it. I might want to just make a separate Paypal account for the thing? Noooot sure.

But since it is for a creative project, it is possible that friends of friends etc might be interested in contributing also, so it's tempting to try and cast the net out further. Hence, possibly making it a crowdfunding thing instead of something more limited.

[altamira16]

Does GoFundMe work in your country, and are the expenses for that site similar to the other ones listed above?

[questionablewit]

Pretty sure it does, and I'm not certain. Still researching!