A message from our founders

Crowdfunding is currently paused on StartSomeGood.

Dear friends, supporters and customers of StartSomeGood.

We have to share some terrible and disappointing news we must share.

We have a major problem with Stripe, our payment processor, already causing disruptions to crowdfunding for all of our Australian campaigns and soon, we fear, to all campaigns on StartSomeGood.

We have informed all campaign creators and want to share what’s happening with our wider community, and explain why we can’t accept new crowdfunding campaigns right now.

Here’s what has happened:

Stripe has been our payment processor for 7 years. They are very well-known and reputable and power many large mainstream sites like Kickstarter, GoFundMe, Shopify and more.

Seven years ago when we signed up they were proactively recruiting Crowdfunding platforms like us and promoting themselves as the best for these kinds of platforms. At some point earlier this year however they quietly added “crowdfunding” to their list of restricted business types, but without informing us or, presumably, the hundreds of other crowdfunding sites they power.

Instead, just last week we got an email saying our Australian Stripe account, which powers all Australian dollar campaigns, would be restricted in a week “if we didn’t take action.” The only action offered was to “Appeal”, which we promptly did. Our account was then labelled “in review”, with a commitment to “respond in one to two days.”

That was ten days ago, and we still haven’t heard back. Earlier this week, despite our account still being, apparently, under review, despite us taking the action they asked us to take and despite saying this would only happen if we didn’t take that action, our account was restricted, leaving us unable to process payments. We requested that Stripe at least give us a 14 day extension in order to enable them to review the account, and in order for us to allow live campaigns to finish, but they have so far refused.

We can hardly put into words how upsetting this is for us and our team, mostly because of how it unfairly affects good people doing important work, raising much-needed funding on our site, and because of how unfair and flippant it all is, with only automated responses and no real human contact.

It would have been easy for Stripe to off-board us without harming our campaigns, and giving us enough time to switch to a different payment provider without so drastically harming a social enterprise we have spent the last decade building.

If you’re wondering if they have suddenly shut down Kickstarter and GoFundMe as well, they have not. They appear to be working their way progressively through the smaller platforms, rather than making an announcement to everyone and proposing a realistic transition plan. This shows that this urgency is totally unnecessary, and fair notice could easily have been given had they chosen.

In fact, at this stage it’s only our Australian Stripe account that is affected, not the US account powering USD and global campaigns, but it is likely just a matter of time before it gets restricted as well. Given we can’t trust Stripe to be reasonable we have had to inform all these campaigns as well so they can explore alternatives.

To those fundraising on our site, let us say again publicly how very sorry we are that this affects you. Our mission is to support changemakers like you and we were so proud to be hosting your campaigns. We know how much this will affect you and the communities you serve.

This shutdown will affect two democracy organisations in Myanmar for instance, cutting off vital funds being used to support local activists as they struggle against the military junta.

It affects a group of local community campaigns in Parramatta, Australia, who came through a program supported by the City of Parramatta. These projects include funds for a youth orchestra, to add wellness classes to a local community centre and to support low-income women.

It disrupts the launch of a social enterprise supporting migrant and emerging artists, and another creating jobs for victims of domestic violence.

All of this could have been avoided.

If you have made a pledge to a current campaign, please be understanding when they reach out to ask you to pledge again or make good your pledge through a different channel. We’re very sorry for this inconvenience.

If you have pledged, your information is totally safe. There has not been a bug or a hack or any technical problems, this is purely a decision by Stripe. Your details are safe, but we can’t access them or process them while our account is restricted.

We hope to have crowdfunding back up and running as soon as possible with a new payment provider.

For those less technical this may seem less disruptive than it is, like switching from one telecommunications company to another, but the better analogy would be if the last company unexpectedly ripped all the telephone wiring out of your office overnight, requiring not just a new provider but significant rebuilding.

We will move as fast as we can and will provide updates as we go.

If you have any questions or would like an alert when we are back fully functional you can write to us at support@starsomegood.com.

Thank you for sticking with us and for all your understanding and support during this time.

Sincerely,

Tom Dawkins and Renata van Diest

Co-founders, StartSomeGood