Two sides, one shared record of what actually happened.
GoFundLocal connects people raising money for local causes with businesses that sponsor them — not with a blind donation, but with real promotion both sides can see get done.
For Local Members & Institutions
Raise money for your cause, free
A Campaign is a fundraising page for a local cause — a Little League team, a school program, a family in need, a community event. Local Members create Campaigns for themselves; Institutions (schools, churches, cities, and other organizations) create them under their organization's name. Both work exactly the same way, and both are free no matter how much you raise.
- 1
Create a Campaign
Set a goal, add photos, tell people what the money is for. It costs nothing to start.
- 2
Share it locally
Donors give directly through your Campaign page — the money is yours to put toward your goal, no waiting on anyone else.
- 3
Request a business sponsor (optional)
Ask a local business to sponsor your Campaign in exchange for something real you'll do for them — a social share, wearing their logo at an event, a mention in your update. It's tracked and verified, not just promised.
- 4
Or browse the Marketplace
Businesses also post standing sponsorship offers to the Marketplace — browse it and request one directly instead of waiting for a business to notice your Campaign.
For Businesses
Sponsor with confidence, not blind trust
Sponsoring on GoFundLocal isn't money you send and hope pays off. You set the terms — what you're offering and what you want in return — and the discount is only earned once you've verified it actually happened.
- • A public business profile local Campaign creators and donors can find
- • Real local visibility tied to causes people already care about, not a banner ad
- • Full control over the terms — you set the discount and what earns it, every time
- • A public Trust Score that grows as you follow through
- 1
Choose a plan
Basic, Pro, or Ultimate, based on how many sponsorships you want to run at once — priced below, starting at $15/mo.
- 2
Find a Campaign to sponsor
Respond to a request sent to you directly, or post a standing offer to the Marketplace for Campaign creators to find and request on their own.
- 3
Set your terms
A base value for what you're offering, plus the specific, verifiable actions that each earn a piece of that value back as a discount.
- 4
Verify and pay only for what happened
Approve each deliverable as proof comes in. The final price recalculates automatically — you never owe more than what was actually earned.
Pricing
What it costs
Starting a campaign and receiving donations is free — always, with no listing fee and no cut of what you raise beyond the payment processing shown at checkout. A paid plan is only for businesses that want to sponsor campaigns.
Get Started
Basic
$15/mo
- ✓Public business profile on the directory
- ✓Up to 3 active sponsorship agreements
- ✓2 sponsorship rule templates
- ✓2 photos on your business profile
- ✓Approve/decline sponsorship requests
- ✓Review and approve proof submissions
Scale & Manage
Pro
$30/mo
- ✓Everything in Basic
- ✓Up to 12 active sponsorship agreements
- ✓Unlimited sponsorship rule templates
- ✓6 photos on your business profile
- ✓Featured business listing
- ✓Requests matching your criteria sorted to the top
Power User
Ultimate
$65/mo
- ✓Everything in Pro
- ✓Unlimited active sponsorship agreements
- ✓10 photos on your business profile
- ✓Priority business placement
- ✓Create and manage your own campaigns
- ✓Reputation analytics
- ✓Export your sponsorship history and reviews as CSV
Plans are monthly and can be changed or cancelled at any time from your dashboard.
Trust & Safety
How the Trust Score works
Every account carries a Trust Score from 0 to 100, shown on business profiles and campaign pages. It isn't a rating anyone hands out or buys — it's calculated from what an account has actually done on the platform, and it moves on its own as that history changes.
A new account starts at 50. That's the neutral midpoint rather than a grade — it means there is no history to judge yet, not that the account did anything to deserve it. Every factor below moves it up or down from there.
Reviews
up to ±20 points
After an agreement completes, each side rates the other 1–5. A 3-star average is neutral and moves nothing; every star above or below shifts the score by 10.
Completion rate
up to +30 points
The share of finished agreements that completed rather than ended in dispute. Only resolved agreements count — anything still in progress doesn't help or hurt.
Confirmed disputes
−10 points each
A dispute only counts once an admin has reviewed it and confirmed this account was at fault. Having a dispute raised against you costs nothing on its own.
Why a dispute alone doesn't hurt you
If simply being disputed lowered a score, anyone could damage a competitor by filing one. A dispute is raised on a single deliverable, reviewed by an admin, and only affects the score of whichever side the admin explicitly finds at fault — which may be neither.
Badges
Three badges are earned purely by score, and appear automatically once an account reaches the threshold:
- • Gold Partner — 90 and above
- • Trusted Promoter — 75 and above
- • Reliable Sponsor — 60 and above
A new account starts below all three, so a badge always reflects something an account has done — never the fact that it signed up.
One badge is not earned: Pro Partner comes with the Ultimate plan and reflects what a business pays us, not how it has behaved. We call that out here rather than let it read as a performance badge — the Trust Score itself is the part you should judge a business on, and it can't be bought at any tier.
What Makes It Different
The Accountability Tracker
Every sponsorship runs through one shared page both sides can see: the Accountability Tracker. A business sets the deliverables and discount up front. A Local Member submits proof — a link, a photo, a screenshot — for each one. The business approves it, or rejects it with a stated reason, and the final price updates automatically as approvals come in. If a business goes quiet, any deliverable left unanswered for 7 days auto-approves, so a Local Member's earned discount is never held hostage indefinitely. Every outcome feeds each side's public Trust Score.
Common Questions
Questions people actually ask
Is this the same as other crowdfunding sites?
Campaigns work similarly — free to start, donate directly. GoFundLocal adds a second way to fund a cause: local businesses sponsoring it in exchange for real promotion, tracked the same way a donation is.
What does it cost?
Starting a campaign and receiving donations is free. Businesses that want to sponsor campaigns pay a monthly plan: Basic at $15/mo, Pro at $30/mo, or Ultimate at $65/mo, differing mainly in how many sponsorships you can run at once. Plans can be changed or cancelled at any time.
Do businesses just donate money?
No. A business sets a real product or service value and the specific actions that earn a discount against it. It's closer to a performance-based partnership than a donation.
What stops a business from refusing to pay after the fact?
The Accountability Tracker. A business must approve or reject each deliverable — rejecting takes a stated reason — and anything left unanswered for 7 days auto-approves, so an earned discount can't just be ignored.
What stops a Local Member from taking a sponsorship and not delivering?
A business never owes a discount until it approves the proof behind it. Nothing is paid on a promise.
What's the Marketplace?
A public board of standing sponsorship offers — a business posts what it's offering and what it's looking for in return, once, instead of waiting for individual requests. Campaign creators browse it and request an offer directly, the same way a business can respond to a request sent to them.
Ready to get started?
Raise money for free, or sponsor a cause your business actually wants to be seen backing.