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

Math is hard

[Toxiz]

"more than 90 percent of GoFundMe campaigns never meet their goal. For every crowdfunding success story, there are hundreds of failures." -- So around 9 failures, for every success story. How did we get to hundreds?

Re:And I assume you didn't read the study

[pnutjam]

Once you start donating money in a significant way, you start learning that not all causes are alike...and you learn to make good choices so that your donations will actually matter.

Wouldn't it be great if there was some sort of clearing house that handled your "donations" and made sure they were applied correctly, to people who really need them for medical expenses.
Even better if the overhead was lower then any other comparable system.
We could call it Medicare, or something like that.