Prepared for Heather Wilson & Jacob Wells · GiveSendGo Marketing Director · April 2026 · Houston Hanna
GiveSendGo has a real mission, a loyal community, and something no secular platform can copy. The path to closing the 33× traffic gap with GoFundMe runs through the foundation first — fixing the core pillars that make every other investment work — and then building feedback loops where successful campaigners become the platform's best evidence, and emotional content tells the story better than any ad ever could.
GSG ranks for ~475 keywords. GoFundMe ranks for 50,000+. Nearly every GSG keyword is branded — the site only appears when someone already knows it exists. Week one: identify the 50–100 keywords GoFundMe ranks for that GSG should already rank for — low competition, high intent, mission-aligned. Then build content and pages targeting those first.
"How much does a funeral cost" — 8,100 searches per month. No GSG page. These are people in exactly the crisis that leads to a campaign.
75 out of 100 people who click "Start a Campaign" leave without finishing. The most common friction point on platforms like this: asking for an account before the campaign is built. Moving account creation to the end — letting people build first — typically lifts completion by 10–20 points. Industry benchmark is 40–60%. Getting there means significantly more campaigns from the same traffic — no new ad spend required.
GSG's negative reputation is largely contained to specific political spheres. The real problem is that people who love this platform are not being asked to say so publicly. A systematic review push — emailing creators after a successful fundraise, prompting donors after they give — captures that goodwill and directs it where first impressions are formed. More positive voices drown out the noise without engaging it directly. The AI Overview issue gets fixed the same way: more authoritative voices saying true things about GSG in the right places.
GiveSendGo has three natural content channels that no other platform can replicate — and none of them are being used strategically.
Jacob — the factual, principled voice. Legal cases, platform freedom, the political stories GSG touches that no other platform will.
Heather — the emotional voice. Lives being changed, her honest reaction to what she's seeing, the heart behind why they built this.
GiveSendGo official — entertainment-first, not marketing-first. Stories from real campaigns on the platform, and paid creators going into the world to find broken situations and help fix them. Compelling, emotional, human — the platform shows up at the end because it's where the help came from. This is content GoFundMe structurally cannot make.
Braze is installed. The Facebook Pixel is installed. My week-one priority is auditing exactly what is running, what donors actually receive after giving, whether pixel audiences are configured correctly, and where the gaps are. From there: donor welcome sequences, campaign creator coaching emails, and retargeting for the audiences already being collected.
Beyond that, GSG should be running long-term drip campaigns to its most valuable audience segments. Someone who donated to a medical campaign two years ago is the most likely person to start one. Slow, consistent ads to these audiences cost very little and pay off the moment life changes.
Campaigners are reached through SEO content that finds them mid-crisis — before they know the platform exists — and retained by making the campaign creation process actually work.
Donors mostly arrive through campaigns their friends share, so creator success is donor growth. The highest-value move is converting one-time donors into recurring Giver Army members through a lifecycle email sequence that doesn't currently exist.
Supporters grow by making sharing frictionless and giving the most passionate advocates — the Give Team — the structure to do what they already want to do.
| Format | Posts | Avg Likes | Finding |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reels | 11 (7%) | 20.5 | 4.5× higher engagement than static — almost never posted |
| Carousel | 16 (10%) | 6.3 | Product explainers; moderate performance |
| Static photo | 128 (83%) | 4.5 | Dominant format; lowest engagement |
| Content type | Posts | Avg Likes | Finding |
|---|---|---|---|
| Event / Sponsorship | 10 | 24.0 | Highest performer — borrowed audience from external events |
| Campaign Stories | 9 | 6.9 | Most brand-building content; least posted |
| Prayer / Hope Team | 51 | 5.4 | Most posted; execution is announcement, not story |
| Tips / How-To | 22 | 4.5 | Second most posted; near-dead in engagement |
| Product Features | 4 | 4.0 | Lowest engagement of any category |
Best post in 2026: 16 likes. The account's most-posted content (tips, prayer announcements) is its lowest performer. The platform's most emotionally compelling asset — real people in real crisis — is almost entirely absent from the feed.