Caregivers and Crowdfunding

Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberg and this is the program for you as a family caregiver. And we are so glad that you're with us. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. If you want to be a part of what we're doing, go out there. You can submit comments, questions, whatever's on your mind.

If he wants to call you from the show, we'll be glad to do it. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. If you've been watching the news, you've been watching this whole thing with the Canadian truckers and all the stuff going on with this. And then there's this company that just showed up on the radar for me. And I'm sad to say, I didn't know a lot about them, but I went out and investigated them and it's Give Sin Go.

I've always heard of GoFundMe, but I was very disappointed to see that GoFundMe was playing politics with what was going on with people trying to help support the truckers there in Canada and other things. I thought, why? My goodness, if they're going to shut down something they don't like there, guess what? They'll shut it down over here too.

And I thought there's got to be an alternative. And that's what I discovered Give Sin Go. And so I have Heather Wilson and she's one of the co-founders. She and her brother Jacob founded this company and she's on the phone with me because I have some things that are going to apply to us as caregivers. So Heather, welcome to the program and thank you for taking the time to call in. Well, thank you for having me, Peter. Tell us the story of Give Sin Go.

Sure. So about eight years ago, I come from a very large family. So I have 11 brothers and sisters and we were, I know it's a big family and we were sitting around most of the Christian ministry or missionaries, things like that. And we were sitting around talking about what it would look like.

GoFundMe had just kind of come on the scenes. It was, I started to see a lot of things and we thought, wow, this is really cool. What a cool idea that people come together to meet other people's needs. Like that's what the church should be doing, we thought.

And we started to discuss what it would look like. Is there any Christian alternatives out there? And so me, my brother Jacob and my sister Emily, we said, let's start this company. We'll call it Give Sin Go and be an alternative to platforms like GoFundMe because we saw that GoFundMe was doing a great job of allowing people to raise funds. But as Christians, we knew that funds, financial things, yes, they help in the immediate situation, but people have needs greater than finances. And that's the hope we know that Jesus can give. And so we thought, let's create a platform that may help and hope come together. And so Give Sin Go was founded. We started walking it out.

And around six and a half years later, we found, you know, we grow year over year, people coming on from mission trips and medical bills and all those type of things. And then about two years ago, we found ourselves in the middle of a political battle because a young man named Kyle Rittenhouse came to our platform. And he had been deplatformed off everywhere else. And he was looking to raise money for some legal fees for some trouble he had found himself in. And we said, yeah, you used to raise money for legal fees.

You're presumed innocent until you go to court. And we allowed him and that set us into this position. And recently, the most recent, we have this trucker convoy that went there, GoFundMe. Everybody, when they saw this trucker convoy go to GoFundMe, they said, what are you doing? GoFundMe over the last several years has made it very known that they put their political ideology into what they allow and don't allow. And sure enough, we saw it play out where GoFundMe decides that it doesn't go against, it goes against their terms of service and stops the campaign. And so the trucker convoy came to give them go and has since raised almost $10 million surpassing the $8 million that was raised over on GoFundMe.

Well, that is extraordinary. And I saw that you guys were in the thick of this. I did not know that you were in the middle of this thing with Kyle Rittenhouse. And how are you, how are you doing navigating through these political waters? What's anchoring you?

How are you guys doing with that? You know, when we started, I actually have used this analogy a lot. I feel like David, you know, in the Bible, when he was a child and his mom said, hey, I want you to go bring some food to your brothers who are on the battlefield.

And he starts just walking out in obedience to bring his brother some food, like a good thing he's obeying his mom. And I feel like we did that for the first years of Give Then Go. We were just walking in obedience. We felt like God wanted us to start this platform. But then we arrived in the middle of a battlefield. And we said, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on? Just like David, he showed up. And there was a giant bear mocking God. And he said, no, no, we're not, why isn't anybody standing up to this?

This is God is greater than this. And we found ourselves, you know, thrust into this battle. And we said, we're going to stand for freedom.

It hasn't been easy. People on both sides hate us. Christians, we get emails from Christians that say, you shouldn't be in politics. And then we get emails from non-Christians and people that hate some of the campaigns that are on our site. And we say, you know, we don't agree with every campaign on our site, but we'll stand for freedom for those people wanting to raise funds. You know, I look at the efforts being pushed by so many in our society that want to just shut down any type of dissent. If you don't agree with it, shut it down as opposed to, you know, what you just said, letting people express however they're going to express it.

And you certainly have guidelines that you do that you have very, very firm boundaries that you don't allow people to do things, porn and all that kind of stuff and funding, anything like that. But I wanted to specifically kind of pivot a little bit into some of the things that I felt like my audience would find this meaningful is that this can help with medical, significant medical challenges that are going on with people. And talk a little bit about that. Do you see a lot of that going on?

It gives in go. Yes, we do. It's actually one of our major categories, because a lot of people don't always because a lot of times people find themselves in the middle of having tremendous medical bills that they weren't expecting or hadn't planned for. And they feel alone in it. And the cool thing about crowdfunding is that it doesn't take one person with $10,000 to give it takes 10,000 people with $10, right? Or and you get a big crowd of people each giving a little and you can make such a tremendous difference in the world.

And that's what we're seeing is that people are looking for community. And that's what give then go does it says here, come to give then go start a campaign, share it with your community, let them know the needs, let them know what you're walking through, and allow them to be a part. A lot of times we're afraid to ask people for help.

And there are people going, I wish I had known, I wish I knew you were going through this, I would have been happy to help, you shouldn't have to go through it alone. And give them go we one of our first teams that we hired was a prayer team. And what that prayer team does that every campaign that gets started on gifts and go get the call from a prayer partner. So if you were to start a campaign, you're a caregiver, and you're finding yourself having more and more medical bills or bills that you just weren't expecting you didn't plan for.

And if you start a campaign on gifts and go to raise funds, you would get a phone call from someone that says, Hey, I see that you're raising funds that you're a caregiver for maybe your mom or whoever. And can I just pray with you right now that God is just with you through this, this journey that you're going through. And we have found people just blown away. Even people you don't have to be a Christian to come on gifts and go.

You don't even have to have any sort of faith at all. Our whole goal is to share hope in people, what oftentimes feels like hopeless situations. I'm just really moved by this, Heather, because I think about all the people that listen to this program who are struggling and they need a break. They need some kind of respite care. They need something, but they don't have the funds to pay a service to come in or something like that. Even if it's just one day a week kind of thing, something as simple as respite care can be available to a family caregiver, to a family that is struggling with needs and just put, put it out there, let the community hear about this. And like Heather said, somebody is going to call and pray with you about this.

They're going to see that you have a need. This is what scripture talks about in bearing one another's burdens. And this is such a magnificent display of this and what these folks have done.

And it's doing this to promote what Christ has said to each other. You know, when I was sick, I was naked, hungry, whatever, we can't give if we don't know about it. And so I wanted to introduce this wonderful service to this audience. Give, Send, Go. Heather, in the last couple of minutes, what's something that you'd like for everybody to know about you all and what's the best way people can just start this process?

Sure. So it's a really simple process. You can go to givesendgo.com and just hit start now. You'll be walked through a couple steps of creating your campaign, choosing a recipient. You don't have to be the recipient of the campaign.

You can choose somebody else to collect the money if you're raising funds for somebody else. And then you start sharing your campaign with friends and family and your social circles and let them know. I feel like today and today's day and age that community, you know, with the last few years with COVID and all the restrictions and things like that, we've lost that. And we need to get back to knowing that we have a community of people that are supporting us and praying for us and just there to help out when things are rough.

And we all go through those rough times. So come to givesendgo.com. Start a campaign. It's an easy way to allow friends and family and the people in your circles to know what you're going through. We have a pray now button on our site. So if someone can't give to your campaign, they can click pray now and they can leave you a prayer message. So even if someone's maybe not able to give, you're getting these encouraging messages of people lifting you up and letting you know that you're not alone. So givesendgo.com. Start your campaign today.

That's wonderful. And just on a technical matter here, if the money is distributed out, will it be taxable? And do they need to make sure they coordinate this with some type of tax professional?

So, you know, crowdfunding is in a weird space right now of the government, not really regulating it as much and trying to figure out how they're going to regulate it. If you raise over, right at this current time, I always tell people to check with a tax professional, but right at this time, if you raise over $20,000 from over 200 people, you'll get a 1099 sent by our processor to you. But we've talked with people and pretty much tax advisors, what they're saying is if everybody's giving small gifts, you might get a 1099, but you just show, look at here's all the people that gave gifts. These are just small gifts. This is not, you know, this is just a gift from people. That's not income for me. These were gifts. And so there's ways, you know, again, talk with a tax professional, you have to raise over $20,000 with over 200 givers, and that changes all the time. And so I would definitely check with a tax professional.

But there are ways around of saying these are like little gifts from individual people, which is allowed, which is allowed in the United States. Great, great. Well, you've heard it here and you don't have to do this for yourself. Maybe you know a family that is really struggling and they could benefit from some help.

And they may not have a big network, but you do. Start a give, send, go campaign today for that family. Tell the story about it. Let's bond together as believers and let's do this and let's show the world what it looks like for Christians to do this. Heather Wilson, thank you so much for being a part of this.

Givesendgo.com. Heather, I very much appreciate it. We're going to have you guys back on. Loved your story. Love your passion. Love what you guys do. Appreciate you helping get the word out with fellow caregivers of what they can do to help themselves and to help other caregivers. Thank you for having me. Yes, ma'am. This is Peter Rosenberg. This is Hope for the Caregiver. We'll be right back.