A man has recalled the moment he realised he accidentally donated $15,000 to a food relief fundraiser instead of $150, and how he managed to remedy the situation.
The individual, who goes by the username u/lazybear90 on Reddit, recounted the story, which took place in February of last year, on the subreddit TIFU.
In the post, the 32-year-old man, named Michael, explained that he decided to share the story at the urging of his friends, before noting that the incident happened soon after he and his wife, then 31, had moved into a new apartment building in San Francisco, California, last year.
After moving into the new building, the couple met one of their new neighbours, a “70-something-year-old retired veteran” who Michael referred to as Joe and who the Reddit user described as a “white American guy” and “a devout Hindu priest”.
According to Michael, one day he ran into Joe in the hallway, at which point the veteran informed him about a charity he managed for a community in Bangladesh. Michael wrote that he wanted to support his neighbour, and the charity, so he asked Joe to send him the GoFundMe link.
“The next day at work, I go on the GoFundMe page and donate $150. Or so I thought,” the man continued, before revealing that, “moments later,” he received a warning from his credit card company about an “unusually large transaction”.
“I’m confused and swipe to open the text message. It says I have made a payment of $15,041 to GoFundMe,” he wrote, adding that he “immediately” began sweating and panicking. “How could I have donated FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS? I spend the next 10 to 15 minutes retracing my steps, and finally I realise my credit card starts with the numbers four and one.
“It seems I had accidentally started typing my credit card information while my cursor was still in the donation box, and just like that 150 became 15041. Yikes.”
TIFU by donating $15,041 to a poor community in Bangladesh instead of the $150 donation I intended.
by u/lazybear90 in tifu
In an effort to rectify the mistake, Michael said he immediately called GoFundMe’s support line “in a panic,” and was eventually able to explain to a human operator what had happened.
According to the man, the GoFundMe employee assured him that the fundraising company would be able to reverse the transaction and refund him the money in three to seven business days, which the Reddit user described as a “huge relief”.
However, he said he then began to worry that the charity would be able to see the $15,000 donation before the charge was reversed, as he recalled that the amount was notable because it had “doubled” the amount raised by the charity “overnight”.
“I ask the agent if the charity will be able to see the donation on the GoFundMe page until it is refunded. ‘What do you mean?’ the agent asks me. ‘What do YOU mean what do I mean?’ was my response,” he wrote. “‘Will they be able to see the $15,041 donation?!’ Unfortunately, yes, the agent tells me. They will be able to see it until the refund process is complete. I tell him that’s a big problem, as the entire GoFundMe had hardly raised that much at that point. Surely they will notice their fundraiser doubling overnight?”
According to Michael, at this point, he decided that he would knock on his neighbour’s door in the morning and explain the situation so that Joe would be able to pass along the information to his fundraiser contacts.
However, the situation got trickier by the next morning, according to Michael, as he claimed he woke up to more than 40 Facebook notifications from an individual in Bangladesh thanking him for the donation.
“The man had sent me a video of himself from Bangladesh, surrounded by dozens of impoverished and hungry people holding bags of food, thanking me BY NAME (Michael) for my generous donation,” he wrote, adding that he began to panic and pace around his apartment. “Part of me wants to scream, part of me wants to crack up laughing.”
According to the Reddit user, who shared a link to some of the photos he allegedly received, the man in question had sent him “literally hundreds” of pictures of individuals in Bangladesh thanking him for the GoFundMe donation.
Just some of my 249 photos from Bangladesh
The response from those helped by the fundraiser prompted Michael to rethink his decision to refund the entire charge, as he said he “couldn’t live with myself just donating $150 after seeing how the community responded to the $15,041”.
“I decided the least I could do was to add a zero, and so I donated $1,500 once the original donation was refunded. The charity’s host was incredibly gracious and understanding, and he explained to me that $1,500 goes very far in Bangladesh for urgent food relief,” Michael continued, before adding a current link to the charity’s GoFundMe.
Michael concluded the story, which has since gone viral on Reddit, by noting that, ultimately, he believed the experience was a “win-win,” as he “helped a great cause, and I got a funny story out of it”.
On the GoFundMe link, where it notes that the fundraiser has recently seen an influx in donations and raised more than $118,000 of its $148,000 goal, the organisers have acknowledged the impact Michael’s Reddit post has had on the GoFundMe.
“Two weeks ago, a donor’s story went viral online, bringing our GoFundMe to over 2,800 amazing new donors from across the planet. Result: doors that were closed to us before are now opened. Resources which were out of reach are now available. This new capacity enables us to bring more food to more people more often,” the GoFundMe’s organiser Jeffrey Dunan wrote, adding: “Our field director in Bangladesh, Mr Shohag Chandra, is now able to prepare and host up to eight food-relief programs per month. Since January of this year, we have constructed a dedicated kitchen with commercial-grade cooking equipment.
In the update, Dunan, who also goes by Vasanta Dasa, explained that the goal of the fundraiser is “simple,” to “bring the best resources we can find to those who need it the most primarily to an underserved population (the elderly and the poor)”.
According to Dunan, who wrote that he began the fundraiser in 2021, the charity “provides meals and other supplies to people regardless whether they are Hindu, Christian, young, old, tall, small, etc”. “Hunger knows no boundaries,” he wrote.
In another update shared shortly after Michael’s viral Reddit post, Dunan revealed that the fundraiser had received more than 1,800 donations in a single day because of the social media post.
In the “words of support” section of the GoFundMe, many individuals have expressed their support for the charity while revealing that they learned about it from the viral post. “Saw the Reddit story of Michael on the YouTube channel Smosh and just wanted to say that Michael’s embarrassing story ended up fundraising for so much more than what would have been raised. So, in a sense, he did end up donating $15,041 and much more,” one person wrote.
On Reddit, where the original post has been upvoted more than 36,000 times, readers have also praised Michael for sharing the story, and for helping raise money for the GoFundMe as a result,
“Best post on here in AGES. Thank you for the great story and for helping out those folks. $1,500 is still very generous. Man, this got me good. I hope you didn’t get behind on bills or anything after this mix up,” one person commented.
Another said: “You’re a good guy, Michael.”
On the GoFundMe, a recent update includes photos of individuals living in Bangladesh holding up signs that read: “Thanks Reddit.”
The Independent has contacted Michael and Dunan for comment.
