"Cancer, emergency, dreams at risk. Through new technologies of crowdfunding, these crises elicit help from friends, family and strangers. While admirable, this extended altruism often disappoints and fails to meet the gaps in a weakening social safety net. Incisive, rigorously original, and accessible, GoFailMe illuminates how a new industry is reshaping social solidarity."
—Elisabeth S. Clemens, University of Chicago

"Crowdfunding has become an important part of contemporary philanthropy, providing opportunities for ethical expression as well as needed transfers of funds. Like social media, it offers individuals a chance to engage directly in providing help, whether to friends or to strangers, without relying on traditional institutions. In this first major study of digital philanthropy, Schneiderhan and Lukk provide narratives showing what this means for the donors and beneficiaries, and also what reveals about charity in a shifting social context."
—Craig Calhoun, Arizona State University

"In their compelling, well-documented book, [Schneiderhan and Lukk] examine thousands of crowdsourcing cases across Canada and the U.S. on websites like GoFundMe. Their book shows that sites like these often fail users and are rife with inequities that closely parallel the social problems that plague societies today.... For readers who are contemplating either setting up a crowdsourcing site or donating to one."
—Ellen Gilbert, Library Journal

"Schneiderhan and Lukk's book offers a detailed and data-driven account of the failures of digital crowdfunding in democratizing charity. The book is clearly written and accessible, appealing to readers of both academic and lay backgrounds. GoFailMe is a great resource for those seeking to expand their knowledge on the rise of and access to digital crowdfunding."
—Daniela Zuzunaga Zegarra, H-Sci-Med-Tech

"Overall, this is a well-researched book that provides a lively and well-written introduction to the claims and the realities of philanthropic crowdfunding, elucidating both how it reflects, reproduces, and—most intriguingly—reconfigures broader structures of inequality in the United States and Canada."—Emily Barman, Social Forces

"Schneiderhan and Lukk provide a highly interesting and original analysis of how crowdfunding sites, like other for-profit and technological solutions, fail to address social inequality as a structural phenomenon and instead conflate it with individual narratives, reshaping at the same time the future forms of charity in society."—Anne Kovalainen, American Journal of Sociology

Erik Schneiderhan is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, with appointments at the University of Toronto at Mississauga and at St. George. He is the author of The Size of Others' Burdens (Stanford, 2015). Martin Lukk is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Toronto. His research investigates the political consequences of economic inequality.