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Who is GiveSendGo founder Jacob Wells? Freedom Convoy raises over $7M via platform

The fresh campaign called Freedom Convoy 2022 has already raised more than $7 million through GiveSendGo as of Wednesday, February 9

After GoFundme shut down a campaign for Canadian truckers protesting vaccine mandates, a new fundraising appeal has already raised millions of dollars.

The fresh campaign "Freedom Convoy 2022" has already raised more than $7 million through GiveSendGo as of Wednesday, February 9, after GoFundMe halted the original campaign. The original appeal had raised about $10 million before website bosses courted controversy by withholding money donated to support the truckers.

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Jacob Wells, who founded GiveSendGo in 2014 and is currently the CFO of the platform, called out GoFundMe and Big Tech for their "authoritarian style of social platforms" and accused them of promoting bias and causing further division. "Big Tech really has taken it upon themselves to be the arbiters of truth. And it's a place that they were never intended to be, and it's caused more damage than good," Wells told Fox News in an interview on Monday, February 7. "We are now stepping into that place because there is a natural pushback from many people because America was founded on these ideas of freedom."

"This is like the tip of the spear and what is coming in a tsunami of technology that is pushing back against this authoritarian style of social platforms where it's like these people just think that they get to control the narrative," he continued. "It’s mind-blowing to me that they actually think that is the way that it ought to be because, in my perspective, it only breeds more distrust and more vitriol, more divide."

While GiveSendGo shot to prominence after allowing donations for Kyle Rittenhouse's defense, Wells informed that Freedom Convoy 2022 is the platform's largest fundraiser to date.

Ottawa police have been making several arrests at the trucker protests, ticketing about 500 people and threatening charges for those caught providing fuel to the truckers. Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly, who convinced GoFundMe to shut down the convoy’s campaign last week, warned those who were supporting the demonstrations financially and said the police will "continue to go after the money."  

Speaking to Fox News, Wells said he had not been contacted by the Canadian authorities regarding the new fundraiser on his platform. He noted that the latest campaign was started by the organization Freedom 2022 Human Rights, which is a sanctioned Canadian nonprofit. "It's very, very fascinating to me that governments have stepped into that extent, especially in the Western world, because it goes against everything that we know, which is that our rights don't come from government, they come from God and that he's given us those," Wells said. "And it's the government's place to ensure the security of those rights not to try to take them from us."

Wells, who has served in the military, said that governments were making a "mockery" of the sacrifices that were made to preserve freedoms by enforcing Covid mandates. "I'm a military veteran and I just I know what that sacrifice is, and I'm not going to walk on that lightly," Wells said. "Literally, men and women have given up their lives, their security, they give up their safety and leave everything on the line to see freedom exist in this country and to walk on that to say, ‘Well, I'm going to take that from you.’ That’s such a mockery of those sacrifices."

"GiveSendGo will always stand for freedom for people on either side of our current ideological separation," he asserted. "That freedom was first bought at the cross for us. But it was also maintained by the blood of courageous men and women who sacrificed their lives so that we could live in freedom."