Tim Cadogan talks taste
The GoFundMe CEO on Henry V, Yorkshire Tea and how to raise $30bn for charity
Tim Cadogan talks taste
My personal style signifiers are well-worn Birkenstock Arizona sandals, Joe’s Jeans and black Lululemon 5 Year T-shirts. I am perhaps the least stylish person ever, but I do have a distinct uniform. My bald head has also been a signifier for some time now. The last thing I bought and loved was a Mammut Trift long-sleeve shirt in dark navy. It’s light, packable and warm. I love visiting the area surrounding Banner Peak and Mount Ritter in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where I go backcountry running, hike the Thousand Island Lake Loop and camp out in the solitude. A base layer is a key wardrobe item.
The best souvenir I’ve brought home is a compressed-wool rug from Mongolia. My teenage son and I went last year and we stayed with eagle hunters who are semi-nomadic. It was made by the woman we stayed with, which makes it extra-special; I have never seen a weaving technique like it elsewhere. My interest in philanthropy started with my parents, who supported Oxfam, Save the Children and Amnesty International, among other charities. I grew up in Dorset and went to university in the UK – first the University of London, then Oxford – before heading to California for my MBA at Stanford. I started my career at the Boston Consulting Group, before moving on to OpenX, an ad tech company, then running the consumer search division at Yahoo. When I turned 40, I decided to try a more hands-on way of helping people. I trained for a year and a half to join Sierra Madre Search and Rescue, a 40-person volunteer group funded solely by donations, which helps people anywhere, anytime, in the wilderness.
One of the best things about humans is that we are hardwired to help each other. Nothing feels better than making someone feel safe on the worst day of their life. It was looking for ways to make that kind of impact that I found my way to GoFundMe, the community-powered fundraising platform, which I joined as CEO in 2020. Much of my focus is on making it easier for people and organisations to ask for help and fundraise successfully. That means a constantly shifting mix of customer meetings, product discussions and operating reviews.
My biggest achievement has been helping people and non-profits use GoFundMe to raise more than $30bn since I joined. We often see generosity demonstrated in moments of major crisis – like the 2025 LA wildfires, when GoFundMe raised $265mn to help people access food, temporary shelter and other essential supplies. But the majority of donations centre around the cycle of life we experience in our communities – acts of generosity that help families through difficult times, fund local art projects, help local businesses stay open or enable students to pursue higher education.
The best book I’ve read in the past year is Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England’s Greatest Warrior King by Dan Jones (Bloomsbury). It shows how incredibly challenging it was to be a king: constant political uprising, discontent, arguments with parliament. It’s never-ending. He was hit in the face by an arrow in battle aged 16 and died of dysentery at 35. Being a royal is not all it’s cracked up to be. My philanthropic heroes are Avril Benoît, the former head of Médecins Sans Frontières, who has done outstanding work all over the world, and Australian community leader Zena Armstrong. She did so much to help rebuild the New South Wales community after the devastating Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20. She set up a GoFundMe to establish a tool library for locals to borrow and rebuild with. The best gift I’ve given recently is a painting I bought for my wife on a recent trip to New South Wales. It’s a traditional painting in the Western Australian style – very abstract and in varying shades of brown, like the land there.