- Tony G
Posted by Keith-264
on October 28, 2021, 3:08 pm
|
Dear Friends, Many of you will have contributed to my Libel Appeal Fund, first at Just Giving then at Go Fund Me. On 19th July I received a terse unsigned email from GFM informing me that my account was being removed forthwith and that any donations in the pipeline were being returned to the donors. The latter is unlikely since my last donation was on 27 August, i.e. two months ago. I have an outstanding application to the Supreme Court for permission to appeal and I don't envisage any further legal action. As you know the legal action failed and I was made bankrupt on July 14 (but still alive!). I have therefore emailed GFM today (I initially responded but received no response) asking them some questions. I copy the email below and also attach it for your benefit. The main problem with what GFM have done is that I am unable to send out anymore updates. It is or was a very useful database. I was going to send out a balance sheet of how much I had raised and spent etc. during the past 3 years to all donors. I will have to do it here and via my blog etc. But it won't reach all those who donated. I would be grateful for those who did donate to contact me at tonygreenstein111@gmail.com so I can keep your details on file and in contact. Fundraising Balance Sheet In total from fundraising via Crowdfunding I raised £32,073.79. Of this fees to the Crowdfunding companies took £1,645.84. I also raised via other sources - Paypal (£3,388), Direct payments to bank account, (£12,352), Facebook (£618.11) and Interest (92.13). making a total of £48,524.03. My expenditure was as following: The total spent on legal fees for my barristers was £35,040. The total spent on personal expenses was £839.22. This included train fares for the innumerable journeys to court, photocopying, postage and I confess I treated those attending the first court hearing to a round of drinks! I probably underclaimed as I am not good at keeping receipts but I hope you accept that at less than 2% of the money raised I wasn't extravagant! I saved probably £12,000+ on court fees alone through fee waivers. I did have to spend on stationery, ring binders and the one asset I have retained - a large hole puncher which was necessary for compiling the Bundle of papers. A lot but not all of my photocopying was free. In total I spent £127.08. I had to compile some Bundles (3 copies in total for the Judge and other side) and pages could run to 400 or so. Again it is very modest. Unfortunately the courts are responsible for the felling of many a forest and the sooner they move to all electronic bundles the better. I made charitable donations from the surplus £10,226.98 details of which i have already given. This leaves a surplus of £2,417.83 which I have transferred to the charity which I founded, The Brighton Trust. Go Fund Me's behaviour is pretty outrageous but then it is a United States company whose ethics leave a lot to be desired. I recently made a donation and found they were asking me to make a 'voluntary' donation to them of 12.5% saying they didn't charge a fee to those who use them. Whilst strictly correct what they do is deduct 3.1% approx plus a fixed fee from all donations which amounts to the same thing. Anyway please read my letter and in future Boycott Go Fund Me unless they retract Below I have copied my letter to these people and I have attached it plus the original correspondence they sent me. Tony Greenstein Brighton BN51 9EZ 07843350343 Alex GoFundMe Trust & Safety team support@gofundme.com Dear Alex, On 19 October 21 you or someone from Go Fund Me sent me an unsigned email informing that ‘We are writing to inform you that your GoFundMe account has been removed due to a violation of our Terms of Service.’ You gave me no warning or time within which to respond. I was told that ‘the content of your fundraiser falls under our "Prohibited Conduct" section’ and you referred me to this link.’ I have gone to the link and I am none the wiser. I am therefore writing to ask you what it is specifically that I am alleged to have done. I wish to appeal your decision, In particular I wish to ask whether it was linked to the email I received from you on 26 July: ‘I wanted to reach out and let you know that our team has received bankruptcy orders that correlate to your fundraiser. Please note, your account will not be removed but we wanted to make you aware of the orders we received.’ What has changed since you sent that email? I have not received any donation since 27 August and I have not made any further appeal since then since I have no need to. My barrister is now acting pro bono in my appeal to the Supreme Court so I do not have need to appeal for further funds unless litigation begins again in the lower courts. However I did want to use the Updates feature of my appeal to keep donors informed as I do not have a list of the emails of all those who donated though fortunately I was religious in keeping the names of all donors and most of them I can trace. I regard your action as a breach of trust and I will use my blog and reputation to warn people off using GFM in the future if you do not retract your decision and explain, honestly and openly, what is the real reason for your decision as I do not accept that I breached your extremely vague and wide ranging list of prohibited conduct (which in practice means offending the US government). I have also observed recently, when myself making donations via GFM that you ask for a ‘voluntary’ contribution of 12.5% of the donation to GFM. You say that those who use crowdfunding don’t pay a fee, which is a lie since you deduct 3.1% + 25p from each donation. You are a profit making company and should not be behaving as if you were a charity. It appears that you accuse others of behaving inappropriately when it is you who are behaving unethically. As you can see I raised a very considerable sum via your site. I shall advocate to Palestine supporters that in future organisations boycott GFM as you cannot be trusted, unless you explain your actions and retract your decision. Yours etc. Tony Greenstein |
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