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Gofundme: A Case Study

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On a remarkably warm September day for Middlebury, VT, as I and a friend walked to the dining hall engrossed waist-deep in a conversation about the cost of college attendance, he furiously stated “I might just actually start a GoFundMe to be able to buy books for class; they’re so expensive.” Remarking at the veracity of the statement and the absurdity of starting a crowdsourcing website, we both laughed. I thought Jason didn’t really mean it, he had laughed it off. But maybe he did. Crowdsourcing websites like GoFundMe, Indiegogo, Kickstarter have increasingly become the default medium for fundraising for various causes. From student loans to mortgage payments, sites like GoFundMe provide convenient and quick platforms for individuals seeking monetary assistance and GoFundMe today claims to have raised over 3 billion in …show more content…

Medical and health campaigns consistently comprise GFM’s most popular funding category, claiming 17% of the total donations in 2012. By 2015, GFM has hosted more than 1.8 million campaigns for medical causes. GFM charges a 5% fee on all funds raised which makes it an extremely profitable venture, earning hundreds of millions of dollars each year from charitable campaigns hosted on its site.” At a time of extreme vulnerability regarding medical expense coverage, and the advent of online and easily accessible crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe that ostensibly appear as an ameliorating force. Through GoFundMe, people have successfully amassed money required to undergo surgeries, commence physical therapy, fight cancer and pay other medical expenses-related bills. Alas, the paramount finding of Berliner and Kenworthy’s paper alters the way one understands the efficacy of sites like GoFundMe. After careful analysis of the pages of the 200 random samples, Berliner and Kenworthy concluded that sites like

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