GoFundMe: great for raising money… or for personal gain?
GoFundMe is a great site to raise money for any need. Maybe you have medical bills that are just too high for you to be able to pay, or maybe you want to fulfill a dying child’s last wish.
Using this site for heartwarming actions is the right thing to do. It also shows that there are people in the world who want to see it strive.
But there are also people who use this site for personal gain. Misusing this site and taking advantage of the innocent people who trust it is an issue that seems to be not only on this site but on multiple others.
For instance, there are GoFundMe pages for “Netflix and Chill.” How would me donating to your sex life be a better use of my money than say if I were to donate it to a cancer research fund?
You also have cases where the request may seem perfectly fine and, although a smaller cause than the usual posts, a reasonable thing to donate to. But after further investigations into some of these, it is shown that the money wasn’t even used for the reason stated and used for personal gain.
One example of this happening is from an article on The New York Times, GoFundMe Gone Wild by Judith Newman, who speaks of a woman who made a page to sponsor her child’s figure skating lessons, but who now, says a friend, has a renovated kitchen.
Had she kept with her promise of using the money to further her child’s figure skating, then it would have been worth putting up. But to hear the truth of where the money went to is just horrible.
Well, to me, it sure sounds like people have been studying up on their persuasive skills. Looking throughout the site you can find many pages that don’t measure up to the well-known and respected reasons of the GoFundMe site.
And similar to the case above, there are even worse acts that cause even more damage. Like say, several thousand dollars of damage.
One large story made it on ABC News. A story where reading it would make you believe that you are truly helping a family in need. The parents, Martin and Jolene LaFrance, set up a GoFundMe page to help pay for the medical bills of their child who has cancer.
But these parents were caught in their lie and it was discovered that the child never even had cancer. As stated on the ABC News page from the Cayuga County sheriff, David Gould.
“As a result of this online solicitation, they did receive several thousand dollars in donations. The investigation revealed conclusively that the child was never diagnosed with cancer or any other medical condition that was alleged in the GoFundMe solicitation.”
Thankfully the donators were all given their money back.
But to see that this site which is meant to help those in need, is being used for personal gain, is appalling. But thankfully there are people that use this site honestly and have helped in enormous and beautiful ways.
The GoFundMe website has a section on “success stories.” And as of February 2018 there was a GoFundMe page created by a 14-year-old boy for giving back to the organizations that helped him.
The boy and his mother lived in homeless shelters since he was 8 and when he was ready to give back, decided to donate the money he earned from his soap business to the organizations that contributed to his kindness.
So his GoFundMe page is meant to earn money for his businesses supplies and to hire extra help.
And because of his willingness to give back and spread the kindness that he had received from others, he was named February’s GoFundMe Kid Hero.
Another February’s GoFundMe Hero was Ron Finley. He started his GoFundMe to bring gardens to the schools throughout LA.
In the description section of the fundraiser is a sentence that best describes why he started “Another Gangsta Garden” it states; “Ron is dedicated to empowering individuals to reclaim their health, their lives & their communities by working with each other and the transformational power of the soil.”
And due to this act of kindness and empowerment I believe that people need to start looking deeper into who they want to be. Maybe learning to trust and wanting to be a better human being is what we all need to strive for.
Maybe we need to look to the people who have made a change in the world and work to be more like them. Perhaps helping one another will take us a step closer to creating a better world where we can all share and live in a more respectful place.
Sources
“Success Stories – GoFundMe.” Gofundme.com, 2018, www.gofundme.com/success.
Hutchinson, Bill. “Couple Lied about Cancer Child in GoFundMe Scam: Police.” ABC News, ABC News Network, 9 May 2018, abcnews.go.com/US/couple-lied-cancer-child-gofundme-scam-police/story?id=55011676.
Newman, Judith. “GoFundMe Gone Wild.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 21 Dec. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/fashion/gofundme-gone-wild.html.