Injured Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s GoFundMe effort was originally intended to raise a few thousand dollars for a community toy drive.
With more than $8.7 million in donations pouring in from roughly 245,000 donors since Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest during a Jan. 2 game in Cincinnati, the Chasing M’s Foundation has taken on an unimagined scale.
And it means the foundation will need to make fundamental changes to handle its newfound scope, charity experts said.
“Sometimes a cause starts out very small and one major tragedy can propel a $2,500 organization into an $8 million one practically overnight,” said Laurie Styron, executive director of nonprofit charity watchdog CharityWatch.
“Even with the best of intentions and good faith commitment to manage donations ethically and responsibly, the people capable of running a very small organization may be out of their depth trying to run a big one,” she said.
– Michael Petro