Police have made an arrest in the murder of Gret Glyer, the chief executive and founder of fundraising platform DonorSee. Fairfax City (Virginia) Police Lt. Matthew Lasowitz told The NonProfit Times that one suspect is in custody after being arrested Tuesday night.
Glyer was shot to death early Friday morning (June 24) at his Fairfax City, Va., home while his 2-year-old daughter and infant son were present in the house. Police answered a 9-1-1 call at 2:58 a.m., and found Glyer dead. Officers entered the home at 3:07 a.m., according to reports, and located Glyer, 32, in an undisclosed part of the home.
Fairfax City Police Spokeswoman Sgt. Lisa Gardner declined to comment on a possible motive nor on whether Glyer’s wife, Heather, was home at the time of the homicide. Gardner would not comment on the number of times Glyer was shot, where he was shot in the house or whether he tried to defend himself against his assailant. The 9-1-1 emergency call was from a person inside the home who police have declined to identify .
An autopsy conducted over the weekend confirmed the shooting was a homicide, she said.
Glyer founded DonorSee in Fairfax Station, Va., in September 2016, touting it as an online giving platform that focuses on ending poverty, famine and lack of housing, primarily in African countries. He had worked as a mathematics teacher in Malawi, East Africa, and then in 2013 founded an organization called Housing for Orphans and Widows in Malawi (HOWMS) that fundraised and built more than 150 homes in rural Malawian villages, according to his LinkedIn profile.
DonorSee is described on its website as global minded and committed to “helping the world’s poorest.” DonorSee has connected with aid workers in 38 countries, according to its website, and donor bases are built by workers posting feeds and videos of projects in countries in which they are serving so that donors get a visual impact of projects.
The website features statistics that report $4.7 million has been raised to support 11,493 projects, with 28,424 videos sent to donors.
Glyer and his wife, whom he married in 2018, are themselves recipients of fundraisers, including one started by Glyer, because he claimed online that he declined to pay himself a salary in his first four years of running DonorSee.
The nonprofit Cherish the Dove in Mesa, Ariz., appealed to donors in 2020 to support Glyer because he was working full-time on DonorSee while taking a small salary from the company. The goal was to raise $4,200 a month to support the Glyers, who were expecting their first child in the summer of 2020, according to the Cherish the Dove website.
Cherish the Dove is a Christian organization that spreads the word of God, according to its website, and assists people with education and housing, including in the Czech Republic. Its founder, Hana Dieter, has not responded to a request for comment.
Glyer himself also turned to followers for financial help a few years ago, stating in a fundraising post on the membership platform Patreon.com that he needed to support his family while pursuing a dream of ending poverty and hunger through DonorSee. His post asked that supporters serve as patrons to his family or make one-time, tax-deductible contributions.
“I dream of a world where our poorest members no longer live on the knife’s edge of survival. But your partnership is vital to making that world happen,” Glyer wrote.
A GoFundMe fundraiser started by a person identified online as Hannah Gourley had raised more than $100,000 in two days. The goal originally was set at $50,000 but was raised to $150,000.
