CrowdRiseReviews 104

Crowdrise is totally incompatent! They have screwed up. My Husband and I are participating in the first T@T Climb at the freedom Tower. They have taken My Husband off the team and put all his donations to me>>WTH. I have spent day trying to fix with their online support FLACO! Still not right. The donors are pissed off. Making us look like fools NEVER AGAIN!

So I was recently diagnosed with MS, bummer. I decided to do a joint birthday/announcement to all of my friends and family to receive a donation rather than buying me a gift or drink. Was thinking if I worked hard I could get to $2,000. I hit $1,000 in an hour with final amount being over $8,000.

CrowdRise team was great. I reached out to them for advice and they not only recommended me a few MS organizations to choose (I wanted an org where most the money would go to research, not administration), they even helped and created a Custom Template for my page to have a feel more appropriate to me. Also nice not having to handle all of the cash and donations myself using their system.

I will definitely use them for my next fundraiser.

I had heard of Crowdrise and saw it used for the Boston Marathon but never had my own fundraiser. Then I found out you could launch a fundraiser for yourself through them (instead of just raising money for a specific charity) and decided to give it a try. I must say, it was way more successful than I thought it would be and true to their claims, they made it super fun. The customer service was awesome, and I found that people actually WANTED to share my fundraiser. I wasn't getting random donations from strangers pouring in, but I was getting donations from friends of friends that I had never met but loved the cause. I listened to Crowdrise and made the campaign fun and I think it really worked. I always appreciate when a company seems to truly care about what they do and I think Crowdrise really does. I'll use them again for sure.

Crowdrise is absolutely, 100% the antithesis of transparent. The site obfuscates its FAQs and its guarantee.
I had to actually go to a donation page and make a donation to see how it really worked because the descriptions are not transparent.
If a donor wants to donate $100, the final donation page boosts it to $109.10. The recipient can edit that amount back down to $100. But apparently, the donor usually ends up donating the $109.10. So the recipient gets $100, and Crowdrise gets $9.10. But the donor actually gave $109.10. That means the fee is 8.34% ($9.10 out of $109.10).
But Crowdrise doesn't count that extra $9.10 in its calculations. So it claims this:
-------------------
CROWDRISE'S MISLEADING CLAIM
CrowdRise fees are super simple and lower than any other crowdfunding website around. $97 out of every $100 goes directly to your cause. Guaranteed. And, most fundraisers are getting up to $99 out of every $100. Pretty amazing.

If you're raising money for a cause, CrowdRise will guarantee 3% pricing (includes credit card fees). That means you keep at least $97 of every $100 you raise. For real. Nearly every other fundraising site will charge you at least 8%. Plus, there are no fundraising goal or deadline requirements so you keep what you raise.
--------------------

It is blatantly misleading to say the recipient gets 100% of the donations even if everyone increases their donations to cover their costs because the extra they give is part of their donation; you can't exclude the $9.10 as part of the donation in order to claim that 100% goes to the recipient.
This is my first time raising funds for someone. I would never use Crowdrise. I would never recommend it to anyone, and I would tell anyone who is using it to stop immediately.
If this type of marketing is not illegal in the United States, I would encourage people in other countries to sue Crowdrise.

This is just my second time using CrowdRise to help raise funds for a local charity that is raising money and awareness for childhood brain cancer. I set up the event page and then requested some help with setting up registration for the event. I received an email from Nick stating he was at the ready to assist me with my questions. Nick and I arranged to speak over the phone. Nick was super friendly and more importantly he was excited to help me. Over the course of a couple of weeks, Nick and I corresponded at various times of the day to get the site set up just right. Nick and the CrowdRise team did a FANTASTIC job (and I'm not doing their job justice with my wording) on setting up the event and providing OUTSTANDING customer service.

To the CrowdRise Team - you have won me as a customer! Keep up the great work!
THANK YOU

JA

Quintas, our service representative has been a great help. Via conference call in two locations, Quintas guided us through the details of the Claim Your Nonprofit process with attention and skilled listening. He even provided responses via e-mail on the weekend. Kudos to Crowdrise for choosing talented and knowledgeable individuals like Quintas to provide Excellent No Nonsense Friendly Customer Service. We are new at this, but with Quintas we have every expectation we will find success. The motivated students for whom we are raising money deserve no less. Thank you for this transformative platform.

WWW.CROWDRISE.COM/JAKE AUSTIN IS WRONGFULLY CLAIMING TO BE AFFILIATED WITH THE NATL FOUNDATION FOR ABUSED AND NEGLECTED CHILDREN. CROWDRISE IS IN NO WAY AFFILIATED WITH THE NATL FOUNDATION FOR ABUSED AND NEGLECTED CHILDREN. CROWDRISE HAS NEVER GIVEN ANY DONATIONS TO THE NATL FOUNDATION FOR ABUSED AND NEGLECTED CHILDREN NOR HAVE THEY BEEN EVER ASKED TO DO SO. THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION HAS BEEN NOTIFIED OF WWW.CROWDRISE.COM/JAKE AUSTIN. SHOULD ANYONE WISH TO GIVE DIRECTLY TO THE NATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ABUSED AND NEGLECTED CHILDREN, GO TO THEIR WEBSITE WWW.GANGFREEKIDS.ORG FOR THE ADDRESS TO WHERE DONATIONS SHOULD BE SENT. THE NATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ABUSED AND NEGLECTED CHILDREN HAS BEEN HELPING ABUSED CHILDREN FOR OVER TWENTY YEARS.

They wanted to charge $24.00 for a $300.00 donation, so i lowered it to $200.00 and the charge is $16.00 which tells me that they lowered their charge due to so many complains, is now 8%. But what I do not understand is why don't they have a flat fee per transaction if it does not exceed the $1,000.00. They are not a merchant transaction per say to charge based on amount. I wonder if they reduced 2% but is now charging it to the organization. I have donated thru justgive.org and they charge 4.5% and give you the option to you to add it or if you want them to take it from they donation, straightforward.

This site is extremely questionable. I raised funds on the site for Susan G. Komen Central and South Jersey. However, I wanted my company to match the donation so I reached out to Susan G. Komen to verify the donations with my company. After emailing them several times, I finally received a response only to tell me that they had no record of the donation. This was a donation that should have been transferred by Crowdrise's third party vendor which should also send a record of donors and contributions to the organization. Right now I am still trying to find out where the funds are after about 3 months. Although it is possibly Susan G. Komen is at fault as well, the customer service people Crowdrise have been responding with generic and vague answers. Find out where your funds are actually going!