Happy 10th Anniversary Givealittle! Kiwis have given nearly $100m; check out 2018's top campaigns

Next week marks 10 years since Givealittle started back in 2008 and the fundraising site has raised over $97 million since, to help New Zealanders in need.

Givealittle celebrates its 10th birthday next Monday and customer care manager for Givealittle Mel Steel says they’re doing something a little different to celebrate.

"What we are doing for every $10 donated to one of those pages we're matching $10, up to $10,000," Ms Steel told 1 NEWS.

"It's a pretty exciting time being 10-years-old."

A highlight, she says, was the $2.25 million that was raised by 40,000 donors to buy a pristine piece of beach in the Abel Tasman National Park in 2016, that is now bought and owned by New Zealanders. 

Over the past three years Givealittle has raised $58,151,698.

In 2016 Givealittle raised $21,158,941 with people giving 307,420 donations.

In 2017 the fundraising site raised $18,620,757 with 238,441 donations and this year $18,372,000 has been raised so far with 236,441 donations.

Top Givealittle campaigns of 2018

1. Help Ka’iulani beat Neuroblastoma - $241,136

The most amount of money raised through a Givealittle campaign this year was for a three-year-old girl suffering from a rare form of cancer.

That campaign raised $241,136 for Ka'iulani Forbes.  After 50 GP visits failed to diagnose the disease it was eventually diagnosed as Neuroblastoma.

Since diagnosis she's undergone chemotherapy and two major surgeries to remove 75% of the pineapple sized tumour in her abdomen.

Treatment plans for these complex cancers are not available in New Zealand so Ka’iulani and her family received help overseas to further remove the cancer from doctors in New York.

All the funds raised went toward her overseas treatment and to give her the best fighting chance.

2. Help Abby fight and get home - $237,602

Abby Hartley fell gravely ill while in Bali. Ms Hartley, 41, was hospitalised on August 1 while holidaying with her husband Richard, as part of a second honeymoon on the Indonesian island.

Richard, along with Abby's two children, Sophie and Troy posted a Givealittle page as a last resort.

A twisted bowel saw her suffer several infections, a collapsed lung and kidney failure. She was rendered comatose early in September.

The money was raised to fly Ms Hartley back to New Zealand after her travel insurer didn't pay out, saying she had not disclosed a pre-existing medical condition. She sadly died while she was over there.

Read her story here


3. Save Kurt -  $206,515


Kurt is a 41-year-old husband and father to baby Sage who is now one-year-old.  When Sage was just 4-months-old Kurt was diagnosed with aggressive Stage 4 Diffuse Large B-Cell Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. Givealittle was Kurt's last chance at survival. They couldn't treat him in New Zealand so Kurt had to go to the US to get treated.

The funds from Givealittle went towards CAR-T Therapy and in the middle of September this year he was accepted on to a life-saving clinical CAR-T trial.



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