Make GoFundMe Pay for Suspending the Freedom Convoy Campaign

GoFundMe has suspended the campaign for the Freedom Convoy after it reached $10 million. Initially, they were planning to redistribute “…all remaining funds to credible and established charities chosen by the Freedom Convoy 2022 organizers and verified by GoFundMe”. After much outrage, several US Governors including Gov Ron DeSantis of Florida, GoFundMe has stated that it will simply refund all those who donated. Gov Ron DeSantis has said “It is a fraud for @gofundme to commandeer $9M in donations sent to support truckers and give it to causes of their own choosing” in a tweet, which captures the general outrage.

GoFundMe has cited concerns over the protest turning violent after a few of the protestors were investigated or arrested by the police. As several news sites cite, “protesters have shut down downtown Ottawa for eight days now, with some participants waving Confederate or Nazi flags and some saying they wanted to dissolve Canada’s government. To the increasing fury of residents, Ottawa police have largely stood by and watched as some protesters smashed windows, threatened reporters and health-care workers, and abused racial minorities.” While this is definitely cause for concern, it’s also hypocritical for them to suspend the mostly peaceful Convoy protest, while also allowing donations for mostly peaceful Black Lives Matter – which had members that were acting unlawful and unruly.

When it comes to large scale protests, it’s inevitable that some people are going to take it too far, and that it will attract people from all walks of life, some of who will not have views that align with the majority of protestors. Some people will act unruly and unlawful. But overall, the protestors are doing their best to be peaceful, and we do have the right to protest government decisions when we disagree with them.

But what is really shameful here is that GoFundMe is trying to take the funds donated to the Truckers, and funnel them into some other cause, that they politically agree with. This an attempt to steal that money, plain and simple! And they think they can get away with it by just saying sorry, and giving people refunds. This is hostile political action aimed to take money from the side they oppose, the people, and give it to the government approved “charities”.

Luckily, there is something you can do if you donated money to GoFundMe. Instead of asking for a refund, you can ask for a chargeback from your card. Chargebacks actually hurt them! They had a contractual obligation to fulfill, and they didn’t so it’s completely warranted. They have to pay around 40-60$ for each chargeback in addition to the money they give back, and it hurts their rating with their credit card company. A company with around 3% chargeback rate can have credit card companies refuse to work with them! On top of that, a chargeback requires the company being charged back to fill out a lot of paperwork for the reason for the chargeback, so it will cost them man-hours as well.