GoFundMe and similar platforms have been largely unsuccessful in solving financial problems for most of the people who use them, and technological fixes will likely not make a big difference. | Analysis
Many of us are familiar with crowdfunding: donating money to people and their projects using one of many platforms on the internet. During the pandemic, people have sought help through crowdfunding in record numbers, making the activity seem like a de facto part of the American safety net.
We have found that nine out of 10 campaigns do not reach their financial goals, and the median campaign typically raises only a few thousand dollars. Troublingly, we’ve found that in 2020, one third of medical campaigns received no donations at all. Meanwhile, top campaigns of many types on the site can raise millions of dollars from thousands of donors. These statistics begin to paint a picture of widely divergent fates in the crowdfunding economy.
In this so-called “attention economy,” we often feel overwhelmed by the amount of content we see while also failing to recognize that what we do see is but a tiny, highly curated fraction of the content on the platform. What this means is that only a few crowdfunding campaigns ever reach large audiences, and that audiences are far more likely to see already trending or successful campaigns, like the one for Kasson, than unsuccessful ones, like Jim’s.
At the end of 2021, GoFundMe wrote in its annual report, “If 2020 was a year of crisis, 2021 was The Year of Gratitude.” It might be more accurate for GoFundMe to state that in 2021, we were generous, but it wasn’t enough to keep more vulnerable people out of crisis. Countless campaigns appeal to a crowd that never appears, and which may not ever see their request for help.
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