Table of Contents for GoFailMe
Introduction
This chapter uses several vignettes of GoFundMe users to introduce the concept of welfare crowdfunding and lay out the main argument of the book: most GoFundMe users don't get the help they need. The chapter provides a road map for the rest of the book, with a brief summary of each chapter and its respective arguments.
Chapter 1: A Brief History of the Rise of Digital Crowdfunding
This chapter provides a history of digital crowdfunding and takes us up to the present day and the data we've collected on welfare crowdfunding using GoFundMe. Understanding the history (and logic) behind the emergence of crowdfunding and the meteoric rise of GoFundMe contextualizes the data we present in the next three chapters. This history reveals the problematic market-based, techno-solutionist Californian Ideology: digital technology by its nature is democratic and promotes individual freedom; the market does a better job than government in improving people's lives. Because of systemic social biases, the digital divide, and biased algorithms, however, crowdfunding has never worked the same for everyone—most people lose out. In migrating from business to social welfare, crowdfunding has carried the baggage of logics antithetical to social citizenship and the meeting of basic needs that inspired those twentieth-century welfare state programs in the first place.
Chapter 2: A Well of Sadness
This chapter considers who uses and doesn't use GoFundMe to raise money and why they make their choices. Online fundraising is primarily a tool of the relatively privileged. Education trust funds, either to benefit children who've lost one or both parents or to create a scholarship fund in a friend or loved one's memory, are the most common appeals. Tuition and learning materials drive a significant number of appeals as well. Cancer is the most prevalent front-stage reason for setting up a medical appeal; back-stage realities of insurance, job loss, and general financial troubles underpin most situations. Whites do the most crowdfunding. Because non-Whites are more likely to get cancer and have both less insurance and less job security, this should cause concern. The most precarious, marginalized, and prone to illness among us may be asking for help somewhere, but they're not doing it through crowdfunding.
Chapter 3: A Very Daunting Task
This chapter looks at the challenges of setting up a welfare crowdfunding campaign. The situation that gave rise to the campaigner's need—or all the other demands of daily life—might make it hard for them to find the time or energy to do so. The digital divide and other structural inequalities accrue particular disadvantage to non-Whites, elderly adults, and those living with disabilities, along with people who live in remote and undeveloped regions. Some of the most disadvantaged have the hardest time seeking help. Assuming they have the time and the internet access and know-how needed to set up a crowdfunding appeal, they then have to market their struggles and their story (or that of a friend or family member).
Chapter 4: Queen for A Day?
This chapter looks at welfare crowdfunding outcomes and shows that only 17 percent of Canadian and 12 percent of American crowdfunders make their goals, meaning that 80 to 90 percent of crowdfunders don't. The GoFundMe process privileges the few. Those at the top, the highest-earning 5 percent, claim more than half of all fundraising dollars. And those who succeed often receive a boost when they're featured by the platform. Promotion leads to visibility and donations for the campaigner, which lead to profits for GoFundMe. This can't happen for every cause, though. Overlapping inequalities seep in, resulting in the campaigns on GoFundMe experiencing more inequality than that in any country in the world. Most of those who fail experience despair, stress, and anger. They gave up time and privacy to put their problems in front of the public and got little or nothing for their trouble.
Chapter 5: What to Know Better, Do Better, Help Better
What do we do with a system that feels more like a game show than a means for truly helping those in need? In this concluding chapter, we ask and answer this question, offering some paths forward. By revisiting our findings, we isolate and emphasize the massive potential and positive contributions of welfare crowdfunding. We also underscore the significant problems we've uncovered in welfare crowdfunding for profit. We offer short-term suggestions, like urging GoFundMe to create an application programming interface that would make its activities more transparent. And we call for more government oversight and regulation of GoFundMe and crowdfunding in general. Longer-term solutions include encouraging those in need to approach mutual aid societies rather than crowdfunding platforms. We also call for more government funding of basic social welfare needs, including through the creation of an emergency fund available to Canadians and Americans.