Tag: research

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.

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.