youcaring – Crowdfunding: Origins, Concepts, and Future

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.

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.

Tag: youcaring

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