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GoFundMe is Giving Away ‘Free’ Money to Teachers

HEY check it out, we have something nice to say about GoFundMe! Well, unless this contest backfires horribly and a bunch of teachers start complaining about the fake fundraisers that were made “on their behalf” yet never delivered any money. But until then, we have something nice to say about GoFundMe!

The National PTA and GoFundMe have teamed up for Teacher Appreciation Week, and as a sign of their teacher appreciation, GoFundMe is putting up $100 to certain fundraisers for teachers.

The rules are fairly simple:

In order to be eligible to receive a $100 donation from GoFundMe, a campaign must be created by May 8, 2016 11:59 pm PST through this link, use #ThankATeacher in the description, and raise over $100 comprised of donations from at least five (5) unique campaign donors by May 13, 2016 11:59 pm PST. US only. GoFundMe donations will be made after June 1, 2016. If not a teacher yourself, you must select the option to have the money withdrawn by a teacher.

GoFundMe reserves the right to cut off its generosity after making it rain on 1000 eligible fundraisers. See official rules for more information and all the important legalese.

It appears GoFundMe will be taking its usual 5% cut out of any of these specialized fundraisers, and WePay gets their 2.9% so depending on how successful these campaigns are, it’s not much skin off GoFundMe’s back to kick down $100 on each. But hey, free money for teachers amiright?

Sadly, my favorite teacher of all-time passed many years ago, so I’ll be sitting this one out.

Here’s a handy infographic from GoFundMe explaining the need.

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You’ll note that once again GoFundMe used that tricky “donated” language. There’s no mention of how much of that $60 million donated made it to classrooms or what it was used for, but I guess knowing how much people gave is somewhat important. For GoFundMe, at least.

Anyway, this appears to be a good thing. We’ll go ahead and believe that until we find out otherwise.