In multiple studies analyzing hundreds of fundraisers for medical care on GoFundMe, researchers found that 9 out of 10 campaigns don’t reach their financial goals, and marginalized race and gender groups are associated with poorer fundraising outcomes. “But for most people, it doesn’t really work.” “It only works if you have a network of people already, or you can get lucky and go viral or something,” Erichsen said. “A crowdfunding platform can not and should not be a solution to complex, systemic problems that must be solved with meaningful public policy.”īut in the absence of federal intervention to address a pandemic-induced recession, historic levels of unemployment and a fatally mismanaged national public health crisis, many Americans have few other places to turn.Įrichsen said his experience raising money through the platform has been mixed at best. “We do not aim to be a substitute social safety net,” the company wrote in a statement to The Nonprofit Quarterly in 2018.
The company had previously distanced itself from its reputation as a clearinghouse for individuals and families whose medical bills left them at a crossroads between bankruptcy, debility and death. The company declined to provide any specific figures on how much money from the fund had been allocated to date, and how much of that money ended up in Oregon.īetween March and September of this year, GoFundMe raised over $625 million through more than 9 million donations to COVID-19-related causes alone. A separate study released a year later yielded the same statistic.Īside from raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for individual fundraisers related to statewide fires, GoFundMe has also raised over $440,000 dollars for a general wildfire relief fund that will be distributed by the company’s nonprofit arm. households made disaster-related donations in 20. Please help us get back on our feet and back to rescuing rabbits.”Įrichsen’s most recent appeal vanished into the sea of over 100,000 annual emergency fundraisers on the site, which advertises itself as “the leader in online emergency fundraising.”Īs the company leverages its dominance of social crowdfunding by expanding into charitable donations, raising millions of dollars for disaster relief and social justice issues, researchers warn GoFundMe’s platform is perpetuating systemic inequalities that lead to poorer fundraising outcomes for those most in need.Īccording to a 2018 study conducted by the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University, 1 in 3 U.S. In addition to his mother, who is recovering from a bone marrow transplant and leukemia, Erichsen is caring for rabbits, chickens, dogs and cats that he evacuated from a temporary rescue shelter he was running near Cave Junction.Īfter having some minor success raising money for his mother’s cancer treatment on the crowdfunding site GoFundMe, he returned to the platform with an appeal:
“If it wasn’t for having to take care of my mom, I’d be having the time of my life right now,” Erichsen said. After wildfires rendered him homeless in September, he moved from a motel room filled with rescue animals to an RV in the woods in southwestern Oregon. Brad Erichsen said his biggest fear is that he’ll look back on 2020 as “the last normal year,” and his year has been anything but normal.
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