‘If GoFundMe were a non-profit, we would be the fourth-largest in the world’: The Big Business of Crowdfunding and the Ethical Implications of (Micro) Mega-Philanthropy

• In Event: Show me the money! Science and Technology in the Age of Mega-Philanthropy

Abstract

Crowdfunding for personal medical expenses (CPME) has grown exponentially, now constituting a multi-$B industry powered by Silicon Valley start-ups, venture capital, and social media affordances. Historically, US-based philanthropy has fostered notions that petitioning for aid requires not just demonstrating need, but also moral worthiness. This also shapes the governance of health care, oscillating between free market principles v. ethical obligations of state to citizenry. Pushed to extremes, medical expenses contributed to 62% of personal bankruptcy claims prior to the Affordable Care Act, and remain the single largest cause today. CPME has emerged in response, seeing opportunity in reducing friction between widespread need and altruistic aspirations. Advocates proclaim the need to ‘disrupt giving’, upending traditional philanthropy through platform capitalism models. However, despite rhetoric implying otherwise, GoFundMe and most other crowdfunding platforms are decidedly not non-profits. Rather, they are immensely profitable, usually by taking a cut from each donation. Moreover, because personal judgments of moral worthiness are the primary determinant of donations – rather than need itself – what emerges is the assetization of virtue. Also, only certain health conditions are likely to acquire funding; health conditions of ‘crisis’ fare much better than chronic illness, or conditions associated with vice (thus risking further stigma and injury). Governing bodies support crowdfunding, perhaps for devolving state duties while reaffirming familial/community ties (ie. the supposed ‘safety net’ of neoliberalism). Clinical research groups are also redirecting fundraising efforts through crowdfunding appeals by their research participants. Yet, around 90% of CPME campaigns fail to reach funding goals. Hence, while already marginalized subjects are turned for profit, those even further marginalized are not heard at all. This creates injurious metrics of life’s worth. What burdens are imposed in compelling subjects to plead for life itself in hyper-competitive attention economies? What types of health conditions are seen deserving of aid? Are we witnessing, framed in egalitarian rhetoric, modes of governance that reflect not enforced, but ensouled neoliberalism? A positive reframing of vulnerability as entrepreneurial possibility, implying those who prove themselves as deserving will be redeemed through market-based mechanisms?

Author

• Matthew Wade