Taylor Swift

How Taylor Swift Changed Another Tech Company's Policy

Reporter

July 10, 2015 2 min read

Our favorite business-savvy pop star has done it again: influenced a tech company to change the way it does business. However, in this case, the change probably won't affect you unless you're a philanthropic millionaire.

On Thursday, GoFundMe announced that it had decided to raise its giving limit from $15,000 to $50,000. The new limit was inspired by a generous donation from Taylor Swift that had exceeded the crowdfunding site's current limit.

On July 7, Swift donated $50,000 to Naomi Oakes' campaign to fund her fight against cancer after seeing a video about Oakes that used "Bad Blood" as her "fight song." Due to GoFundMe's limits, the pop star had to send the money through three donations of $15,000 and one of $5,000.

"Taylor Swift’s donation was so generous that it required us to increase the donation limit on the platform," Rob Solomon, GoFundMe's CEO, on the company's website.

Prior to the new limit, GoFundMe's $15,000 limit had been set by its payment processors, which were able to raise the limit for the company starting Thursday. There has never been any limit on how much a GoFundMe campaign can raise in total, with the all-time most successful campaign raising more than $1.8 million. Oakes' campaign to fight cancer has raised more than $73,000 as of Friday.

In June, Taylor Swift helped convince Apple to pay artists featured on Apple Music, including during the free, three-month trial period – a decision that led Entrepreneur to herald her as "the most powerful person in tech" (at least for the day). This change is not going to affect as many indie musicians, or people in general, as the Apple Music change. However, it does demonstrate Taylor Swift's continued power to create change at tech companies, whether she's penning op eds on Tumblr or making donations on GoFundMe.

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