Crowdfunding: When GoFundMe goes right, and when it goes wrong...

A week ago Denise Morgan was shot and killed in the New York borough of Queens. While her family and friends were struggling to comprehend the devastating news, a community started quietly rallying around them, setting up a GoFundMe page to raise the money needed to bring the 39-year-old’s remains home to Co Louth.

Hundreds of family, friends and acquaintances – and some strangers shocked by the shooting – pledged money and within hours of the campaign being launched, almost €40,000 had been raised, far exceeding the set target of £20,000 (€22,900).

“Words cannot describe the generosity we have received, from across the globe. Honestly from the bottom of hearts we thank every single one of you for your donations, shares and kindness,” posted the campaign organiser Alan Whyte as he closed the fundraising effort.

The response was an instant reflection of the inherent goodness of many people and an illustration of how a crowdfunding platform such as GoFundMe can be used as a financial and emotional support at the very worst of times.

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Sometimes, however, the platform enables more troubled – and troubling – impulses. Last week a 20-year-old woman from Iowa who raised almost $40,000 on GoFundMe after documenting her cancer battle across multiple social media platforms was given a 10-year suspended prison sentence and ordered to pay the money back after being convicted of fraud.

“Through this scheme, you deceived your friends, your family, your community, other cancer victims, charities and strangers who were motivated by your supposedly tragic story to donate to help support you,” Judge John Telleen told Madison Russo.

Addressing the court, the young woman said she been motivated not by “money or greed. I didn’t do this for attention. I did this as an attempt to get my family back together.”

While it is hard to understand Russo’s motives, GoFundMe campaigns can and frequently do bring people together. But sometimes they can have the opposite effect.

Mr Termini went public and said he had not received any of the donated money, and in response the son said the donations had never been intended for his father’s personal use

During the summer, Stephen Termini (57), from Buffalo, New York, suffered serious injuries in an assault on Talbot Street in Dublin. He spent several weeks in hospital and the story had a huge impact on many Irish people.

While he was in a coma one of his sons – Michael (Mike) Rizzuto – set up a GoFundMe page to help with medical expenses and travel costs to enable Mr Termini’s family to come to Ireland to be by his bedside.

The appeal struck an immediate chord with lots of people and more than €120,000 was raised by 4,600 donors in just a couple of weeks. Mr Termini’s condition improved significantly, and a dispute broke out almost as soon as he was released from hospital.

Mr Termini went public and said he had not received any of the donated money, and in response the son said the donations had never been intended for his father’s personal use, adding that taxes and charges would have to be sorted out before any decisions could be made about the ultimate destination of the money.

Mr Termini then set up a second GoFundMe page to raise money to help him gain Irish citizenship and buy a small home in Co Mayo and detailed a target of $100,200 (€93,930).

As of the end of this week, it had raised just $140 from seven separate donors. The campaign is ongoing.

The GoFundMe chief executive Tim Cadogan was in Dublin recently to celebrate the platform hitting the milestone of five million donations here.

By any measure it is a big number and amounts to almost €250 million. It makes Ireland the most generous country on the GoFundMe platform globally since it started operating here in 2017.

When he met The Irish Times in the foyer of the Dylan Hotel earlier this month he acknowledged the Termini story. “Families are complicated,” he said, without fear of contradiction. “This is true human nature, so it happens, it’s not common, but it happens and you obviously take a step back and say, listen, we’ve done our job at this point and there’s not too much that we can do. I mean, we’re not family therapists.”

So, what is GoFundMe’s job? It is a for-profit business with a charitable core. It was established in the US in 2010 as a platform to raise money for myriad causes and within seven years had become the biggest crowdfunding platform in the world.

The concept is simple. People set up campaign pages to raise money. The platform takes 2.9 per cent out of every transaction plus a 30 US cent fee. Those involved in fundraising can also choose to tip the company for enabling their altruism.

Cadogan disputed the idea that it has become a social safety net and said it is, instead, a “community, a way to organise and bring together people that care”.

He said most campaign organisers “typically say, ‘it was great to get that money but what really made a difference is that 48 people I know want to help you out’ and that emotional side is really important. It makes people feel very special.”

He also pointed to the lighter side of the site, the campaigns that might best be described as frivolous but fun.

Our purpose is very simple, it’s like: how do we get more people to help each other? That’s it, that is the purpose of everything we do in the company

—  GoFundMe chief executive Tim Cadogan

At the start of the summer, a group of high school students in the US thought it would be a wheeze if they rocked up to their prom in a tank, so set up a campaign on the crowdfunding platform with a goal of raising the $1,000 they figured they’d need to hire the tank.

Not only did they raise the cash, they exceeded their target by hundreds of dollars and used the excess to pay some outriders to accompany them on their coming-of-age journey.

Cadogan suggested that such stories indicate that the platform can be used by virtually anyone for virtually anything and once a campaign strikes a chord and has a heart, it could do well.

He acknowledged that GoFundMe is in business to make money and having taken a small piece of more than €25 billion raised, it makes a lot of it. “I think doing good being a business is great. Our purpose is very simple, it’s like: how do we get more people to help each other? That’s it, that is the purpose of everything we do in the company. We have intentionally designed it very carefully so we can get the most amount of money to the people who are asking for help.”

I really want us to keep working on how do we make it easy to ask for help, because it’s psychologically quite difficult and I think there’s a lot more work that we can do on that to help more people

—  GoFundMe chief executive Tim Cadogan

He said he believed the platform did not pose a threat to charities who might otherwise get a share of the GoFundMe pie.

“The majority of what is being raised is for individuals, It’s very much overlain on what the charities are already doing because it’s that direct-to-individual impact. In the US we have $400 billion of giving in a year, right, so you know we’re a few per cent of that but not a big piece, so it sits very nicely alongside the charities.”

He pointed to the five million Irish donations since 2017, describing it as “an incredible number” which “equates to quarter of a billion euros raised. I think it’s the community. There is something about how people here feel a sense of community and it’s distinctive. The country has a long history of being very philanthropic.”

When asked about the future he said rather than making it easier to donate he would prefer to to make it easier to ask for help. “A lot of people who talk to me are focused on giving, but that process doesn’t start until someone makes a request. It’s relatively easy to give [and] it’s very hard for us to ask. I really want us to keep working on how do we make it easy to ask for help, because it’s psychologically quite difficult and I think there’s a lot more work that we can do on that to help more people become comfortable and feel safe doing that.”