Struggling to stay afloat during the pandemic, people turn to strangers online for help

It took Josh Mitchell weeks to convince his sister to let him set up a GoFundMe to help her buy a car, a necessity for her to drive to work near her rural home in Upstate New York.

The siblings pride themselves on being independent. He never anticipated needing to ask for such public help – but his sister left her job as a medical administrator due to coronavirus concerns during the pandemic. Then her car broke down, limiting her ability to provide for herself and her preteen daughter.

“Before I started the GoFundMe for my sister, I ordinarily wouldn’t have thought to do one unless it was kind of a once-in-a-lifetime case, like cancer or legal expenses,” Mitchell said. “This is a crisis and that’s why I’m doing it.”  Story continues below advertisement  The pandemic has been disastrous for millions of families across the United States. Roughly 8.5 million jobs have not returned since February 2020. Meanwhile, more than 564,000 people have died of the coronavirus, and 100,000 small businesses closed permanently in just the first three months of the crisis. The government has provided help, including through multiple relief packages that sent out three rounds of stimulus checks and extended unemployment benefits. But for many people it hasn’t been enough — or come quickly enough — to avoid eviction, put food on the table and cover a growing pile of monthly bills.  Enter crowdfunding, which has taken off more than ever in the past year as a way to supplement income. Sites like GoFundMe, Kickstarter or even Facebook allow people and businesses to establish a cause — or set up a page laying out why they (or someone they are raising the money for) need money, and what the cash will go toward.  After demand spiked last year, GoFundMe in October formalized a new category specifically for rent, food and bills. More than $100 million had been raised at that time year-to-date for basic living expenses in tens of thousands of campaigns during 2020 — a 150 percent increase over 2019.  Story continues below advertisement  Both Vancouver-based FundRazr and U.K. crowdfunding website GoGetFunding report similar, though smaller, trends for last year, as well as honeymoon sites PlumFund and HoneyFund.  But a year into the pandemic, some individual crowdfunding campaigns are reporting little success raising donations to cover basic expenses. And the movement illuminates a widening divide in the country during the most unequal recession in modern history.  

The pandemic has disproportionately affected minorities and those who work low-wage jobs, while many others who were able to work from home — a trend favoring more educated workers — often had a smoother year, at least financially. Workers in the bottom 25 percent of earners faced an unemployment rate of around 22 percent in February, compared with the overall rate of 6.2 percent, according to the Federal Reserve. And data from nonprofit Opportunity Insights, which is based at Harvard, found that employment rates for low-wage workers dropped 30 percent as of February when compared to January of last year.  Story continues below advertisement  Still — particularly as pandemic fatigue worsens — it’s getting hard to raise cash for basic expenses this way.  Daryl Hatton, CEO and founder of FundRazr said when he browsed through the campaigns for basic expenses, most were getting little or no donations.  “I saw a whole bunch of zeros,” he said. Crowdfunding still tends to work best when people have a compelling story to tell, and even the tough last year hasn’t budged some donors’ opinions on what makes a worthy ask.  

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