GoFundMe. Paypal. Facebook birthday fundraisers. Today, there are countless ways that people choose to raise money for those less fortunate. Generally, online platforms for giving make philanthropy easier for everyday people. Small donation amounts are welcomed, and it’s easy to give directly from one’s credit card. Philanthropy is becoming more and more convenient, but what exactly does this mean?
The internet is made for sharing, and its ability to viralize content has proved amazingly beneficial for certain fundraising efforts. In January 2019, the youtuber HBomberguy (Harry Brewis) held a charity Twitch stream in which he played the entirety of Donkey Kong 64 on and off for more than 57 hours. He did this to raise money for a UK-based charity, Mermaids, which helps transgender youth and their families. In spiting an Irish comedian who opposed the organization, HBomberguy’s stream raised more than $340,000 for the charity. He gained popular support, with guests appearing on the stream from Mara Wilson and Chelsea Manning to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and more.
By mobilizing this issue on the internet, Harry Brewis did something truly amazing. The public was rallied, and a lot of good came of it. In today’s society, it is so easy to produce and spread content to people all over the world. While this can be detrimental, whether it be hate speech or propaganda being spread, we can also use this to our advantage. The challenges faced by individuals that would otherwise fall silent can now be blasted out to the whole world. Crowdsourcing philanthropy allows a large number of people to give a small amount that then creates huge change. If just 1% of the world’s population each gave $1, that’s $76 million dollars. We may be small, but we are many, and we can change the world.
I really like the idea of making charitable giving more accessible by including the technology we are used to using every day. I always see my friends "donate their birthdays" on Facebook to causes that are important to them; it seems that those birthday posts get more attention then the basic wall posts.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first started exploring YouTube, the VlogBrothers channel (run by Hank and John Green) stood out to me because they would always talk about things in the world that they found interesting. Every year since 2007, the Green Brothers have hosted the “Project for Awesome” (P4A) which is a movement to encourage people to post videos promoting their favorite charities to spread awareness of different organizations as well as donations. Last December, P4A raised over $2 million dollars for their 501c foundation: FTDWS (Foundation to Decrease World Suck).
This is another example of how we are using our collective values and knowledge of technology to improve living conditions of others. I think it’s really interesting to adapt charitable giving Even in our class donations, we’re trying to use Venmo to donate to charities of our collective choice. The internet, specifically social media, can be used in so many different ways, one of which is to share philanthropy.
As one of the first generations to grow up in a world brimming with innovative technology. I think that there are many pros to having more accessible means of philanthropy, but there are
ReplyDeletesome cons as well. It's true that having so many donation options at your fingertips is a great thing, but this also makes finding a reputable or authentic organization is harder. The internet can make it easier for groups or people to hide behind a popular cause while profiting off of average people. There have been more than a few cases of such fraud on sites like GoFundMe. Though, the internet can definitely provide a platform for authentic or more local causes who normally would be harder to access.
Hi Becca,
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with what Sara commented. Fraud can happen so easily on the internet. It is hard to prove that you are donating to a real organization. In addition, there are also hackers that could directly take the money that is donated to these organizations through a website. There was actually quite a massive charity fraud as seen in an article on the FBI’s website which I will paste below.
The article began by talking about how unfortunately charity scams are quite common and that there were 400 complaints of fraud reported to the National Center for Disaster Fraud after Hurricanes Irma and Harvey hit. I found this particularly upsetting as people really needed the money during these natural disasters and multiple people took advantage of this to try and cheat to make money. Next, the article then discussed a specific case where a man by the name Kai Brockington received 668,000 dollars over the span of four years. He did this by taking advantage of different companies’ charity-matching programs. He created a legitimate charity registered with both the state of Georgia and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Those who were matching donations did not think anything of this seemingly real charity and it was so incredibly simple for Brockington to collect the money.
Although charity scams most likely happened before the internet, the internet has provided another simple platform to cheat and lie to make money using fake charities.