The explosion of GoFundMe campaigns reveals this country’s dirty little secret | Guest Opinion

This time of year, we find ourselves touched by the generosity, grace and kindness of people helping people. Extending ourselves to others reveals the best of who we are.

Yet there’s always a nagging feeling that in many cases we are going about this the wrong way.

Even before COVID-19 made the frailty of our social safety net even clearer, Americans have relied on each other for things that other high-income countries like ours count on the government to provide. In the absence of poverty-preventing measures such as universal healthcare or universal basic income, people — especially lower-income people — have become more vulnerable to the vagaries of the economy or a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.

Consequently, in the United States, use of individual fundraising to support basic needs has exploded in recent years, as online platforms such as GoFundMe have made it easier to reach potential donors from anywhere and the pandemic has resulted in lost jobs, health and lives. In addition to GoFundMe, individuals now can share their Venmo links and have people donate to them directly for mutual aid.

In the first half of 2020 alone, researchers found 175,000 GoFundMe campaigns were launched. Unsurprisingly, they found the success or failure of campaigns mirrored larger social and economic inequalities. More than 40% of fundraisers they looked at received no support at all. The most successful campaigns were among people with the highest educational and income levels, not the ones with the greatest need.

Since these campaigns, by nature, are fueled by social networks, often the folks with the least resources are fundraising from others with scarce resources as well. Those with more resources don’t know about or see the dire needs of people they don’t know and who are not in their social circle.

A look at GoFundMes reveals our country’s dirty little open secret: a huge chunk of fundraisers are for medical expenses or related medical needs. And the word you see over and over? Cancer. One study found that 42% of people with cancer depleted their assets within two years.

In 2019, Tim Cadogan, CEO of GoFundMe, said a third of the fundraisers on the site were to pay for medical costs. The following year, the platform created a category covering rent, food and bills.

In 2021, arguing for federal pandemic relief, Cardogan said himself this is not what GoFundMe should exist to do. “Our platform was never meant to be a source of support for basic needs, and it can never be a replacement for robust federal COVID-19 relief that is generous and targeted to help the millions of Americans who are struggling,” he wrote.

Also, the dynamics of this kind of fundraising rewards certain types of needs over others. While physical health issues are seen as sympathetic causes, you don’t see a lot of fundraisers for substance-use disorders or mental illness.

Individual acts of charity will not result in a society that meets the needs of all. The unwillingness to accept this reminds me of the famous saying by Brazilian archbishop Dom Helder Camara: “When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”

I know I will hear from readers who say that people should just take “personal responsibility” and pull themselves up by their bootstraps vs. changing the system so it protects more people from falling through the cracks. But all it takes is one cancer diagnosis, for example, for any of us to fall through.

My hope is that this year, instead of just celebrating a season of giving, we create a culture of care, where we can spend more time relying on each other to build community versus filling each others’ basic needs.

Naomi Ishisaka is The Seattle Times’ assistant managing editor for diversity, inclusion and staff development. She writes a weekly column on race, culture, equity and social justice.

(c) 2022 The Seattle Times