The People GoFundMe Leaves Behind (theoutline.com)

citadrianne shares a report from The Outline: President Donald Trump's proposed budget seeks to slash $54 billion from social services including programs like Medicaid and Meals on Wheels. As these resources dry up, crowdfunding websites will further entrench themselves as extra-governmental welfare providers in order to fill the gap. For a lucky few, these sites are a lifeline. For most people, they are worthless. Crowdfunding's fatal flaw is that not every campaign ends up getting the money it needs. A recent study published in the journal Social Science & Medicine found that more than 90 percent of GoFundMe campaigns never meet their goal. For every crowdfunding success story, there are hundreds of failures. "As many happy stories as there are in charitable crowdfunding, there are a lot of really worthy causes when you browse these platforms that nobody has given a cent to," Rob Gleasure, professor at the business school of the National University of Ireland, Cork told The Outline. "People haven't come across them." Feller and Gleasure's report highlighted how fickle crowdfunding can be. Of all the Razoo campaigns started in 2013, they found, more than a third didn't receive any funding at all. According to their report, donors are more likely to give to campaigns that feature lots of pictures and accompanying text.

Comments

Seriously, Trump?

[LynnwoodRooster]

It's $54 billion from a $3.8 trillion budget. That's 0.14% of the entire budget. A budget where 75% is already spent on social services. And that $54 billion is 9% of what we borrow every year. The Federal Government is spending about $1,000 per MONTH per man, woman, and child in the US - and it's still not enough? The problem really isn't how much we spend, it's how much of it is simply wasted...

Re:GoFundMe isn't the problem.

[pauljlucas]

Apparently ignored in that article is the cost of funding private, for-profit health insurance companies. And it's not only profit, but money such companies must spend on peripheral things like advertising, lobbyists, etc. All of that money, from the perspective of actually providing health care, is wasted money.

By the way, the point isn't necessarily to reduce costs, though that would be a nice bonus. The point is to make sure everyone has health care, including routine preventative care, something many poorer people don't do because they can't afford it. The upshot is that problems that otherwise either would have been preventable or caught early and treated for a lot less expense turn into serious conditions are are a lot more expensive to treat --- or the people either live in misery or outright die.