Crowdfunding Without Compromise: GiveSendGo’s God-Driven Mission

Full Episode Transcript:

Jacob Wells: We knew as believers that money actually doesn’t meet all of our needs. There are actually many things that money doesn’t solve, and particularly when there are these difficult moments where you just have a tragedy, you just got a medical diagnosis that no amount of money that you give to them, as important as that is, actually gives hope in that situation.

So we built, gives and go with those elements and wow, we’re in the middle of this fight as a platform that. Is now faced with those challenges where you had big players in the industry, like PayPal and Discover Card actively censoring against the freedoms of people to be able to transmit money. So we created a generosity model where we were going to be free and rely on the generosity of our users to just give us a little bit extra.

If they were willing completely voluntarily.

Rebecca Weber: Hello everyone. I’m Rebecca Weber, and it’s great to be back with all of you. One of the greatest qualities I think embodied by so many Americans is our desire and ability to really build, create, and innovate American ingenuity has significantly shaped industries, our culture and progress. And today we have a truly inspiring guest joining us.

He is a visionary and he saw the potential to combine faith and technology to create a platform that’s not only transforming lives, but also standing firm for free speech and religious liberty. He Jacob Wells, the founder of Give Send Go, has taken the concept of crowdfunding and has given it a mission driven twist.

We’re thrilled to dive into the story behind Give Send Go and discuss the values that fuel his work and explore the future of this very unique platform. Jacob Wells, welcome to the show. I’m thrilled to have you here with me, Jacob.

Jacob Wells: It’s great to be here. Thank you so much, Rebecca, for having me on. I’m excited to talk about all the things that you just mentioned.

Because the journey for Give, Send, Go has been fantastic and there’s a lot in front of us as we continue forward.

Rebecca Weber: It truly is. And I’d love to hear your story. What inspired you to create this incredible platform, Give, Send, Go?

Jacob Wells: So try to, I’ll try to encapsulate this, make it short. I sometimes can get long winded, but I am one of 12 children.

I actually grew up in this really large family of six boys and six girls. Give. Send. Go. And after I, I got out of my time in the military, serving from 2001 to 2006, began to ask God what he wanted to do with my life. I’d always had a vision for impacting the world. It actually came from a moment where I went to a Billy Graham crusade when I was really young and saw something fantastic happen and it imparted a vision for impact.

I got outta the military and was wrestling through what I was going to do and. Myself and my siblings came together as we sat down after a Thanksgiving meal, and we said, Wow, everyone we know is using crowdfunding to fundraise to, To make a difference within their community, to go on a missions trip with their church, to do whatever.

And there was a particular brand company that was capitalizing the market. I really don’t want to say their name just because Give Send Go is the only name that you should know. But, for, crowdfunding, but we looked at that and we said it’s important to help people raise money for the financial elements that they have, the issues that they have that require finances.

Bye. We knew as believers that money actually doesn’t meet all of our needs. There are actually many things that money doesn’t solve, and particularly when there are these difficult moments where you just have a tragedy, you just got a medical diagnosis that says something potentially bad is going to happen, or a child just dies in a tragic car accident, these issues happen that no amount of money that you give to them, as important as that is, is going Actually gives hope in that situation.

And we had a hope in, our faith that we said, we need to share that in this moment when people fundraise that it’s not just about money. Yes. It’s important. We’re going to build an incredible tool for people to raise money. But we’re going to also share the hope that we have that people can realize that they are valuable, that they have purpose, that there is a God that loves them.

So we built Give, Send, Go with those elements back in 2014 to compete. We launched at the end of 2015. And it’s been a wild ride from there.

Rebecca Weber: I bet. I love your story. It reminds me a bit of AMAC’s story. So we have a lot in common. it was my father who was a member of AARP when he said, This group has turned so far left, they don’t represent the views of most conservative Americans.

and so our family, quite literally, me, my brother, my mother, my father, went to work forming AMAC. So It’s a beautiful story and, it just should encourage everyone out there that, there’s a lot people can do and, for you to be able to offer an alternative choice with a, a, godly purpose, a mission that, that really is rooted in, the values that make this country so great, including our right to free speech and, not censoring people because you disagree with what they believe in, I think is, a tremendous, feat that you’ve accomplished.

But you certainly have faced a number of significant challenges. I’m sure I share some of those challenges that you might have faced in building give send go, especially when compared to other platforms like what successes really stand out.

Jacob Wells: So challenges numerous, partially because you don’t know what you don’t know when you get into something like this.

Oftentimes for my sister and I, Okay. We were, we came from a blue collar background family of my parents. My dad owned his own business and was successful as an entrepreneur in the local area. when we graduated high school, college, as much as it was an option, it wasn’t like a driver, it was like, go start your own business, do something, else.

And We didn’t come into it with a huge technical background from having gone to school for all of these things. And having learned the ins and outs of what a startup would look like, we just took a step of faith. So that was, I think the most important factor for persevering through the challenges, but as we navigated through them, what we found was, there’s technical challenges with the learning curve there, but then we hit points where we found out, wait a second.

Beyond just the unknowns and the technical, the business environment, there’s actually political elements that are fighting actively against the very freedoms that this country was founded upon. And wow, we’re in the middle of this fight as a platform that is now faced with those challenges where you had big players in the industry, like PayPal and discover card and these big institutions, financial institutions, actively centering against.

The freedoms of people to be able to transmit money and use that as a form of speech. and in those challenges, we stood tall and we built our own systems and we bought our own servers and we just took each step a day at a time, trusting that God would lead us as he has in the midst of those challenges.

The challenges actually turned into successes because as we faced those challenges head on and stood boldly in them, they became successes of us reaching greater audiences and now being a platform that’s in over 80 countries around the world. God’s used the platform. Absolutely incredible. You have campaigns actively going on right now in the UK and in Australia and in Africa and South America and throughout Europe.

there are campaigns all over the world using give, send, go, and it’s because we met challenges and we stood on our faith and our principle and they became successes.

Rebecca Weber: Again, this is I just love this. It’s part of what makes America so great. And I love that you do believe that it is a godly mission, which is really wonderful.

I’m going to mention the some of your competition, because they’ve done some terrible things. Go fund me in 2019. Go fund me band fundraisers. from anti vaccine activists. They did it again in 2021 with the Canadian truckers. and I’ve heard many multiple stories, of folks being banned. now with those kinds of controversies surrounding, GoFundMe’s sudden campaign shutdowns really is what they are.

how does GiveSendGo protect the interests of both donors and fundraisers?

Jacob Wells: that’s a great question, and we have seen our competition, even as recently as two days ago, shut down. Legitimate campaigns, one for an incident in Canada where a mom shot a squirt gun and was arrested for assault, and her campaign was shut down to fund, to fight back against the charges for shooting a squirt gun, and GoFundMe just shut the campaign down.

it’s fascinating. What they’re willing to shut down and also what they’re willing to accept, for us in the journey and in, in protecting our users, we’ve created a great, infrastructure. We have a team that’s a verification and payout team, and they analyze every campaign to make sure that it is a legitimate campaign, that the person that has started the campaign isn’t a fraudster, that it’s actually connected to the event that is taking place.

People can try. Fraud is a common thing. It’s a reality of the world that we live in. People see notable stories that happen and they’re like, let me try to piggyback on the media surrounding this story. So I’ll just go create a fundraising campaign. And we want to protect our, givers from, situations like that.

So we have a verification team that does an incredible job making sure that campaigns are legitimate. That they, are not, they are actually connected to the cause that’s being fundraised for. we, have a bunch of protections in place for our users for those very purposes and we’ve had a great history of success.

In doing so, where, we really have caught the fraud that’s taken place or attempted to take place on our platform.

Rebecca Weber: That is terrific. Now, beyond these great measures that you’ve put in place to ensure high integrity, and to be able to represent people, not just here in the U. S. But, to offer people, not just here in the U S a platform, but people across the globe, what do you think are some other differentiators between you and, some other crowdfunding, platforms?

Jacob Wells: Yeah, there’s numerous, and I will say us being available in the amount of countries over 80 countries now compared to our competitor, GoFundMe is 18. So big differentiator there. We’re taking over the global marketplace. Part of our vision is to really be the platform for the world. We’re less expensive.

We’re a free platform. We actually champion generosity in our business model. We said we’re not going to charge for our service when platforms like GoFundMe were taking 5 percent plus of every donation that came through. We said, we believe in a generous God. We’re going to live generously ourselves.

And what that means is people are raising money. Because they need it. They’re in a situation. It doesn’t make sense for us as a platform to take money from people that need it Why don’t we just ask the people that are giving that have the money to give a little bit extra if they’re willing So we created a generosity model where we were going to be free And rely on the generosity of our users to just give us a little bit extra.

If they were willing completely voluntarily. And what we found was our givers were generous and they were willing to give us a little bit more in their donations to the campaigns on our site. And we were amazed at that generosity, but that’s a differentiator. We believe in generosity. We actually have something on Gibson code called the giver army.

It’s now thousands of people that have voluntarily signed to be part of this. Amazing movement of generosity. And they just contribute five, 10 a month on a recurring basis into a category of their choice, whether it’s community causes, whether it’s a pro life causes or pet causes, or it could be any number of causes.

And that money goes into a bucket for those. And that money is given from the charity that we have two campaigns on give, send, go. So we have a crowd for the crowd list. Not everybody has a big crowd to be able to fundraise from. We now have thousands of people that have joined or give our just small donations.

It’s not much, five, 10 a month, but it’s making a massive difference when many people come together. We give away through the charity in this movement thousands and thousands of dollars every month back to campaign. No other platform has it. Anything like this. It’s absolutely incredible. It is a major differentiator.

And then lastly, which really the most important, we, call and we pray over every campaign as they come through, give, send, go. So we hired a prayer team right in the midst of COVID and massive isolation. People were being pushed into, you can’t speak to anybody. You gotta be isolated. And we say, okay, God, our desire is to share the hope that we have.

How do we do that? yeah. And he’s I’ve given you a voice, go speak to people. And we said, all right, how we’re going to do that. We get this contact information of people as they create campaigns. Let’s just call them and pray for them. They’re going through difficult moments in life. they’re struggling and navigating all of the complexities of what life looks like.

So we hired some amazing people and they call thousands of campaigns every month. And just say, Hey, I’m from Gibson. Go and I’m not here to be customer service. I’m just here to pray with you. I’m going to pray with you right now. And it’s an absolutely amazing the testimony. We get people calling back because they missed.

The prayer call and they’re like, I’m so glad I missed it because it’s now saved on my voicemail forever This is an amazing thing that I just got from you guys and some people break down crying and again give send go is not Just for christians. It’s not just even for conservatives for everybody because everyone needs hope but we want to share the hope that we have and these are the ways that we do it and they differentiate us Vastly from our competitors.

Rebecca Weber: I love this. I love the crowd for the crowdless. And I love the prayer that you’re offering. we have a mighty God. We have one God he loves and has created each and every one of us. And when you and I, Jacob, we understand the power in prayer. We’re not going to keep that secret. We’re not going to not tell people about what we know has been nothing but blessing upon blessing.

So the fact that you are Taking that opportunity to engage with people and provide that kind of hope is just so wonderful. And this is even better than I thought. So I’m so glad I’ve asked you that question. Jacob, tell our listeners how simple is it for people to fundraise for their causes using your platform?

And where do they go to get started?

Jacob Wells: Yeah, that’s a great question. It’s about as Easy as you can do anything. We tried to streamline this and make it so simple. It’s give, send, go. com. It’s the website name. It’s who we are. Give, send, go. Those three words, important words for how we ought to live in our lives as givers, senders, and goers, like just impacting the world action oriented, but it’s give, send, go.

com. And within moments, literally within three to five minutes, and it’ll actually even be quicker because we’re incorporating some AI to help people in their campaign creation shortly. But within minutes, you can come to give, say, go. com, click the start a campaign button and have a campaign up and running where you’re receiving funds from your community of friends and from the giver army or whoever else is out there wanting to give.

Within minutes to your cause so in and not only money But we have a pray button people can send prayers as well as we do from our team So it literally is as simple as clicking the start now Start a campaign button on our home page or throughout the website and a campaign can be created We walk you step by step through each of these The simple steps of what can’t be creating campaign looks like, and then you’re done and ready to begin sharing.

Rebecca Weber: Oh, this is terrific, Jacob. You really do embody the American dream and, your vision to build something that was so unique and so sorely needed, in a world where so many people. are ostracized, they’re censored, they’re muffled, and they don’t have the, an opportunity to reach other people.

You are lifting people up, and helping people out. So I want to thank you so much. And, to everyone out there listening, if you think this is something that you would love for AMAC to partner with GiveSendGo, I’m thinking right now, we need to have links up on our site. We need for AMAC to Every AMAC member to recognize that there is an alternative to the other.

I’m going to call them the lefties out there because anybody who’s censoring, those who are really fighting for freedom, there’s something wrong there. Jacob Wells, thank you so much for being with me today. it’s just wonderful to have you here. And I look forward to working together with you and bringing more awareness to your incredible platform.

Jacob Wells: thank you

Rebecca Weber: so

Jacob Wells: much, Rebecca. And I appreciate that. Look forward to further connection for sure. Thank you so much.

Rebecca Weber: Excellent. Oh, thank you. And to everyone out there listening today, if you haven’t joined, go ahead and do that right away. Join AMAC, go to amac. us. We’ve got some incredible specials. just tune in, sign up for our newsletter.

You’ll get our incredible magazine delivered to your mailbox every other month. We are fighting for you. On the local level, on the national level, we’ve got a big, election coming up. We want to make sure our elections are free and fair. We need every single patriot to be a part of AMAC so that we can bring your voice to Washington and do the incredible work that we need to do state by state.

Join or renew. Tell a friend about AMAC. Until next time, everyone, I’m Rebecca Weber. Thanks for joining and we’ll see you again next time. Have a great day, everyone.

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