Man donates $15K instead of $150 to a charity by mistake and it changed many lives

Sometimes, a huge mistake can also turn out fine in the end and it can even change the lives of people in the most surprising ways. A Reddit user u/lazybear90 posted about his interesting mistake on the r/TIFU subreddit and it has since gone viral. He discussed how he donated to a charity on GoFundMe but he also made a mistake. The mistake cost him some money. “This happened in February of last year but my friends have been telling me I need to post this story online…so here goes nothing,” wrote the Reddit user Michael. “My wife and I (both 31 years old, at the time) moved into a new three-unit apartment building in San Francisco,” he revealed that his neighbor is a retired veteran and Hindu priest. His 70-year-old neighbor informed him about a charity in Bangladesh. “I wanted to support my neighbor and the charity.”

The next day, he opened GoFundMe's “Urgent Food Relief Needed: Bangladesh” and donated $150. “Or so I thought,” he wrote. “Moments later, I get a text on my phone warning me of an unusually large transaction on my credit card,” he revealed. “I’m confused and swipe to open the text message. It says I have made a payment of $15,041 to GoFundMe. Immediately I’m sweating. How could I have donated FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS?” 

He soon realized he had made a mistake as he had not left the donation portal when he thought he had. He also typed numbers 4 and 1 and not his intended amount. “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,” he said. He was worried when he realized his mistake and he called GoFundMe's customer care for a refund. “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?”

He had also planned to explain his situation to his neighbor, who had organized the GoFundMe campaign. But when he woke up the next morning, he found that life had different plans for him. “I looked at my phone and saw I had 40+ notifications on Facebook. Someone had sent me a friend request, had liked many of my old posts and had sent me many messages,” Michael wrote. “Immediately I was concerned when I saw that the individual messaging me had a Hindu name, but I never could have imagined what I saw when I opened his first message…”

“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,” Michael shared. He also saw people applauding him in the video. “At this point, I’ve leaped out of my bed and I’m pacing. Part of me wants to scream, part of me wants to crack up laughing. Literally hundreds of photos of frail, elderly, disabled, and malnourished individuals holding signs with my name,” Michael wrote. Michael got his refund but he did not have the heart to only donate $150 after that so he added another zero to his donation and sent $1500. After his story became viral, others also donated to the charity so he ended up raising a lot more for the cause than he had previously intended to donate. It all ended well for everyone!