Crowdfunding

Friday

February 18, 2022

Sorry, Freedom Convoy — fundraisers are only for left-wing criminals

It seems to be harder to donate money to the Canadian truckers protesting their country's vaccine mandate than it is to keep Hunter Biden out of a strip club. After GoFundMe seized millions of dollars raised on its platform for the Freedom Convoy, Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo stepped in and enabled donors to give nearly $10 million. GiveSendGo was promptly hacked and the personal information of 93,000 donors to the Freedom Convoy released to the public. The media — who largely resisted touching the Hunter Biden laptop story because it allegedly contained "hacked" information — jumped on the opportunity to shame and harass private citizens for donating to causes of which they don't approve.

Tuesday

July 16, 2019

David Shabtai, MD

The ethical minefield of crowdfunding for medicine

In an historical crowdsourcing effort, more than 23,000 people put together more than $2.2 million in just four short days to help a little girl that very few of them even knew, so she might have a decent quality of life. Now her family can finally afford one of the world’s most expensive medicines ever, it’s perhaps now appropriate to reflect on how we got here. At first, I assumed it was just another scam. Another email and WhatsApp message trying to raise money for a family in a difficult situation that nobody really knows, whose situation nobody could really verify, looking for a medical therapy or financial solution unlikely to actually help resolve their situation.