Sebastopol-based website lets you register for divorce donations

A Sebastopol-based national crowdsourcing registry that helps people raise money for everything from new babies to funeral expenses has added “divorce” to its menu.

So just as starry-eyed couples seek help financing their June weddings and honeymoons, those less lucky in love can tin-cup their friends and family to help offset the often exorbitant price of breaking up.

The cost of a typical contested divorce can run from $1,500 to $15,000, according to a 2006 Forbes survey, even more if you factor in the fallout costs of child custody and splitting up households.

Sara Margulis co-founded the successful Honeyfund site a decade ago to help people finance their honeymoons, and followed with Plumfund, which helps finance life events such as baby showers and medical bills, as well as charitable causes and community fundraisers.

Divorce now has joined the list, she said, because people want to help their friends, no matter what the circumstance.

“Giving feels good. People want to help,” Margulis said. “It doesn’t matter the reason or the hardship. When you see a loved one going through something difficult, you want to help and often don’t know how.”

Since the divorce registry went live in March, 219 people have created divorce funds, looking for as little as $300 to finalize a divorce to the $100,000 goal one woman set to help a disabled friend whose husband walked out after 25 years of marriage.

Margulis and her husband Josh, a software engineer, came up with the idea for the Honeyfund after their own wedding in 2005. They had everything they needed for their home and wedding but fell short of financing the honeymoon of their dreams.

“We couldn’t find a website that didn’t charge crazy fees, so we put together our own wedding page,” said Margulis, an Analy High graduate and mother of Audrey, 9 and Benjamin, 6.

They were blown away when friends and family kicked in $5,000 for a two-week luxury trip to Fiji. Honeyfund has gone on to become popular and profitable.

Plumfund, which followed later, did not have the same financial success, so the couple turned to reality TV for help. They appeared on ABC’s “The Shark Tank,” a show on which budding entrepreneurs float their ideas, attempting to convince a panel of business titans to invest in their dreams. They snagged an investment from “shark” Kevin O’Leary, the software mogul who founded The Learning Company.

Last fall they appeared on “Beyond the Tank,” a follow-up show that checks the progress of former contestants. They again asked for help boosting their flagging free crowdfunding site Plumfund and were given a free consultation with Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post.

“Arianna is an amazing woman,” said Sara Margulis, 42. “It truly was an honor to meet her and benefit from her wisdom and experience.”

She told them that HuffPost Divorce is one of the more visited features on her site, which Huffington claims has 4 million unique users a month. Conceding that the idea might sound strange, Huffington advised that adding a Divorce Fund might help keep Plumfund afloat and suggested a win-win situation.

Huffington suggested posting personal stories from Plumfund as “free content” on the Post, with a tab that would allow her readers, if moved, to make immediate contributions.