Donor Financial Capacity Drives Racial Inequality in Medical Crowdsourced Funding

Igra, Mark

doi:10.1093/sf/soab076

Cited by 15 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Given a relatively small sample size and lack of significance testing for differences between racial groups, we caution against drawing overly strong conclusions about these results. However, these findings do generally align with other research which documents substantial racial disparities in crowdfunding outcomes (Igra, 2021;Kenworthy et al, 2020).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

“…Despite public support for causes such as hospital and health worker aid, nutrition and PPE, campaigns for individuals and basic needs far outnumbered other purposes. These outcomes lend further credence to observations that crowdfunding is most successful and visible among higher income, better educated and more resourced populations, and less successful among those who need it most (Igra, 2021;Igra et al, 2021;Kenworthy & Igra, 2022;Lukk et al, 2018;van Duynhoven et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 56%

“…We developed codes for campaign purpose and objectives, intended beneficiaries, how much the campaign was motivated by COVID-19 needs and whether the campaign involved a death from COVID-19. Given previous research indicating structural and interpersonal racism impacts campaign success (Igra, 2021;Kenworthy et al, 2020), we assessed the race of both organisers and beneficiaries whenever there was enough information provided to do so. Three team members coded the same 50 campaigns and then reviewed errors and discrepancies.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Struggling, helping and adapting: Crowdfunding motivations and outcomes during the early US COVID‐19 pandemic

Kenworthy

Jung

Hops

2022

Sociology Health & Illness

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During the early months of COVID-19, many people in the US turned to charitable crowdfunding to seek and provide assistance. Little is known about the needs, hopes or experiences that motivated US pandemic crowdfunding and how these were correlated with campaign success. This study uses a mixed-methods data analysis of a randomised cluster sample of 919 US GoFundMe campaigns during the first 7 months of the pandemic. Overall, most campaigns performed poorly, and 38% got no donations at all. The largest proportion of campaigns aimed to address individual, acute financial struggles, often arising from considerable challenges accessing or qualifying for government assistance. These campaigns, as well as those involving campaigners and beneficiaries of colour, tended to be least successful. Qualitative thematic analysis revealed three key crowdfunding motivations that reflect individualistic, agentive responses to the pandemic: struggling, helping and adapting. These motivations reveal a shift away from social suffering and collective mobilisation and towards largely individualised efforts of survival as digital crowdfunding becomes a key domain of crisis response. Crowdfunding platforms are playing an increasingly important role in mediating and influencing individual and collective responses to crisis, which

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 56%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Struggling, helping and adapting: Crowdfunding motivations and outcomes during the early US COVID‐19 pandemic

Kenworthy

Jung

Hops

2022

Sociology Health & Illness

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“…The relative success of these campaigns is likely due to a number of factors other than news media coverage. Based on earlier analyses of medical crowdfunding campaign outcomes, these factors include the relative wealth of the crowdfunding campaigner's community and their educational attainments, race, and social connections (Igra, 2021;van Duynhoven et al, 2019). The findings of the current analysis suggest that news media coverage is among these factors of success.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 84%

Impacts of news media coverage on Canadian medical crowdfunding campaigns

Snyder

Crooks

Cole

2022

Journal of Philanthropy and Marketing

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While donation-based crowdfunding for health-related purposes raises hundreds of millions of dollars yearly, most campaigns fail to meet their fundraising goals. Crowdfunding campaigners are advised to seek traditional news media coverage of their campaigns to increase donor interest and fundraising success. In this study, we seek to better understand what happens to donor behavior via donation-based crowdfunding campaigns after they receive news media coverage. While research has focused on the impact of social media sharing on donation-based crowdfunding, academic analyses of the impact of news media coverage is largely speculative. We searched the Newsstream and Factiva databases for Canadian news coverage of domestic donation-based health-related crowdfunding campaigns. This news coverage was paired with the crowdfunding campaign reported on in the story. Campaign text and daily fundraising totals and donor amounts were recorded for the 7 days before and after publication of the news article. The authors identified emergent patterns in this data around the amplification of personal information from the crowdfunding campaign to a wider audience and inclusion of new personal details. This process identified 17 relevant pairs of news stories and crowdfunding campaigns over a review period of just under 5 months in 2021-22. These campaigns raised a total of CAD$443,134 (median CAD$20,030) out of a total goal of CAD$772,500 (median CAD $40,000) or 57.4% of the requested funds. Median campaign donations and donor numbers increased for the 3 days following publication of the news article. Our exploratory analysis shows a relationship between crowdfunding campaigns that receive news media coverage and the numbers of donations and total amount donated shortly after this coverage. Campaigners may feel pressure to participate in news media coverage in order to reach their fundraising goals. Media coverage has implications for campaign recipient privacy and the equitable distribution of health-related funding. This exploratory analysis establishes the need for additional research on this topic.

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“…Medical crowdfunding accounts for a large percentage of crowdfunded campaigns in the United States for several reasons: neither insurance policies nor social welfare programs fully cover people's medical costs [6]. In addition, medical expenses such as cancer treatment are typically unaffordable, even with insurance coverage [7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Success of Cancer Crowdfunding Campaigns: Project and Text Analysis

Zhang¹,

Tao²,

Ji³

et al. 2023

J Med Internet Res

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Background Recent studies have analyzed the factors that contribute to variations in the success of crowdfunding campaigns for a specific cancer type; however, little is known about the influential factors among crowdfunding campaigns for multiple cancers. Objective The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between project features and the success of cancer crowdfunding campaigns and to determine whether text features affect campaign success for various cancers. Methods Using cancer-related crowdfunding projects on the GoFundMe website, we transformed textual descriptions from the campaigns into structured data using natural language processing techniques. Next, we used penalized logistic regression and correlation analyses to examine the influence of project and text features on fundraising project outcomes. Finally, we examined the influence of campaign description sentiment on crowdfunding success using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software. Results Campaigns were significantly more likely to be successful if they featured a lower target amount (Goal amount, β=−1.949, z score=−82.767, P<.001) for fundraising, a higher number of previous donations, agency (vs individual) organizers, project pages containing updates, and project pages containing comments from readers. The results revealed an inverted U-shaped relationship between the length of the text and the amount of funds raised. In addition, more spelling mistakes negatively affected the funds raised (Number of spelling errors, β=−1.068, z score=−38.79, P<.001). Conclusions Difficult-to-treat cancers and high-mortality cancers tend to trigger empathy from potential donors, which increases the funds raised. Gender differences were observed in the effects of emotional words in the text on the amount of funds raised. For cancers that typically occur in women, links between emotional words used and the amount of funds raised were weaker than for cancers typically occurring among men.

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Donor Financial Capacity Drives Racial Inequality in Medical Crowdsourced Funding

Cited by 15 publications

References 42 publications

Struggling, helping and adapting: Crowdfunding motivations and outcomes during the early US COVID‐19 pandemic

Struggling, helping and adapting: Crowdfunding motivations and outcomes during the early US COVID‐19 pandemic

Impacts of news media coverage on Canadian medical crowdfunding campaigns

The Success of Cancer Crowdfunding Campaigns: Project and Text Analysis

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