Author: Jada James

research

The Future of Crowdfunding

Jada James

“By 2015, crowdfunding is envisioned to become a $93 billion industry.” That’s according to this Medium article. Well, it’s 2019 and crowdfunding has shown no signs of becoming any less popular.

In fact, it isn’t just popular, it’s evolving.

People are now crowdfunding on their own, using social media sites instead of dedicated fundraising sites, oftentimes posting no more than a few sentences along with a link to their Cashapp or Paypal. While there isn’t much written about this form of online charity, where people raise money for simple things like groceries or medical co-pays, my research has lead me to believe that this will be the future of crowdfunding.

A Pew Research Center report claims that 22% of Americans say they’ve donated to some form of crowdfunding project. The same report states that 68% of those who have made donations “report having contributed to a project to help an individual facing some sort of hardship or financial challenge.”

We’ve already seen (in previous posts) that most successful campaigns are legitimate. I believe that successful campaigns are also ones that are truthful. Well, there isn’t anything more legitimate or truthful than a community of people who range from close friends to total strangers rallying to help support a person who is struggling. And yes, of course, there will be people who lie or take advantage of internet anonymity to make money. But we can see that overwhelmingly, crowdfunding makes positive impacts on society by allowing people from all over the world to help with everyday issues as well as societal ones.

The future of crowdfunding seems to be heading in only a positive direction. I personally am interested to see where it leads.

Examples

Examples Of Social Media Crowdfunding

Jada James

Tumblr

  • Here, a Tumblr user asks for Paypal donations, claiming that their father disowned them and is no longer paying their car insurance.
  • Here, a transgender 16 year old asks for help after their family kicks them out.
  • Here, someone asks for Cashapp or Paypal donations after they were fired from work, claiming that they are taking care of their sister with Down’s Syndrome.

Twitter-

  • Here, @ArleenAndino asks for birthday donations through her Cashapp, which is listed in the bio of her Twitter account.
  • Here, @ArcaneCrystal asks for Cashapp donations to stay on top of school, car, and medical payments.
  • A very popular online personality, Jovan Hill, described himself as a “digital begger” on Twitter, and asked for (and received) thousands of dollars in donations. His account is currently suspended.

Facebook has introduced Charitable Giving Tools, which allows users to raise money directly through the social media site. I usually see this in the form of people asking for birthday donations made to charities that they support.

Instagram is where the hashtag #cashappfriday originated, which is where users post their Cashapp usernames in the hopes that someone will donate to them essentially by chance.

research

Scams In The Crowdfunding World

Jada James

An MSN Finance article quoted Alan Brill, a cyber risk expert, as saying “These kinds of scams are proliferating globally, and the thing that’s so depressing is the scammers are so good at taking advantage of tragedy that they have a playbook.”

Crowdfunding scams are notorious in the media, usually because of how successful they tend to be before the scammers get caught. “[Katelyn McClure,
Mark D’Amico, and Johnny Bobbitt] fabricated the story that Bobbitt rescued McClure from the side of a Philadelphia highway in 2017 to enrich themselves, according to prosecutors. The group solicited donations through GoFundMe […] In all, more than 14,000 people contributed,” according to a Washington Post article about the 2018 scam that they nearly pulled off.

McClure and her co-conspirators raised $400,0000. That’s nearly half-a-million dollars wasted because of a scheme concocted by people who really just wanted a free vacation.
The only reason that they were caught was because Bobbitt, who really was homeless but likely never rescued McClure from anything, sued McClure and her boyfriend D’Amico after they refused to give him the promised amount.

Or another example: Lucy Wieland, an Australian woman who faked having ovarian cancer to raise money using a GoFundMe. This TIME article cites the BBC as claiming “[She] allegedly raised $55,000 through a GoFundMe campaign she claimed was meant to treat ovarian cancer.”

But of course, it’s not all scams, all the time. In fact, the most successful campaigns are the genuine ones, considering the fact that it’s fairly easy to suss out fakers online using a quick Google or social media search.

This campaign for the victims of the horrific PULSE shooting in Florida raised over 7 million dollars to support those killed, the survivors, and the families of both.

One of the highest grossing crowdfunding campaigns of all time (interestingly, most of them are for cryptocurrency) seems to be quite genuine. It’s raised over $200 million, its “funding stats” are updated in real time, and it’s all for a video game called Star Citizen.

So we can see that while scams occur, the scammers tend to be caught, and their campaigns don’t seem to be anywhere near as successful.

Also, I believe that the majority of crowdfunding happens for legitimate purposes, and are positive campaigns meant to make a good impact and represent a good cause.

For example, two of the most successful campaigns of 2018 were for the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, dedicated to assisting victims of sexual assault and the Stoneman Douglas Victims Fund, which was for the families and survivors of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.

So while the negatives of crowdfunding are valid, I think that overwhelmingly, it is meant to assist people and causes that need the extra help, and it’s often successful.

research

Crowdfunding: History

Jada James

In Crowdfunding: Why People are Motivated to Post and Fund Projects on Crowdfunding Platforms, crowdfunding is defined as “an open call over the Internet for financial resources in the form of a monetary donation, sometimes in exchange for a future product, service, or reward. ”

Crowdfunding as we’re defining it is only possible through the internet, so it’s a fairly recent development. Of course, the concept of donations has been around forever. They just take a slightly different form online. When you think of donating to charity, you don’t imagine that the money you give will ever be returned to you in any way. But one difference of crowdfunding is that those asking for donations often offer some sort of (usually artistic/creative) services to compensate their givers.

Another difference is the scale. Why People are Motivated also states that “currently, there are more than 50 crowdfunding websites in the US, and they are experiencing an exponential growth in popularity.” This may seem like a lot because of the newness of crowdfunding, but relative to more common nonprofits and personal charity (i.e. when you loan your neighbor $100 to help him move, or giving to someone from your church), there’s not actually that many avenues to pursue for raising money.

It is also, as I’ll be exploring later, much easier to lie.

The first company to dedicate itself to crowdfunding was ArtistShare, in 2001. Since then, sites like GoFundMe, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and more have taken the concept and run with it, enabling people to donate to real people and charities (and some that aren’t so real) with a few clicks of a button.

I believe that that is a good thing. There are plenty of people in the world who are experiencing tragedy or who are struggling to make ends meet, and those who are more fortunate should be able to easily help them when they can. But that doesn’t mean that there are no drawbacks to the system of online donations.


Examples

Example GoFundMe’s from Twitter

Jada James

Proposal

Crowdfunding Through Social Media

Jada James

In recent years, crowdfunding has become a popular way to fund everything from businesses to baby showers. Crowdfunding is essentially asking strangers on the internet for money, and it has become entirely commonplace in today’s society.

Merriam-Webster defines crowdfunding as “the practice of obtaining needed funding (as for a new business) by soliciting contributions from a large number of people especially from the online community.”

Common crowdfunding websites include GoFundMe, YouCaring, Kickstarter, and Ko-fi. Now people even use other payment apps and websites like Venmo, Cashapp, and Paypal to accrue donations.

Some view crowdfunding as digital panhandling. Some believe it’s the same as charity work. There are certainly two sides to be considered. On one hand, there are people who use the easy availability of GoFundMe to scam, lie, and cheat. There are plenty of examples of it, and many often make it to the news – there was a woman recently who scammed Trump supporters out of thousands of dollars by lying and saying she was kicked out of her house for supporting the president.

On the other hand, many rely on crowdfunding to survive. Miss Major, a prominent transgender activist known for participating in the Stonewall riots, relies heavily on a monthly “giving-circle” through the crowdsourcing site Fundly. Her work in LGBTQ activism is regarded as unparalleled, which prompts many people to donate.

And while it’s true that sometimes, crowdfunding can pay for cancer treatments and send homeless teens to college, there are times when it’s used in unethical ways or for unethical purposes. This raises the questions: how did crowdfunding come to be, and what is the future of it? Where do ethics come into play?

I will attempt to answer or at least explore these questions, focusing on the differences between the way crowdsourcing was meant to be used and the way it is utilized, and what that says about our society, as well as looking into how crowdsourcing will change in the future.

crowdfunding