Early Crowdfunding Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Cross-sectional Study

  1. Sameh Nagui Saleh
  2. Christoph U Lehmann
  3. Richard J Medford

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Abstract

As the number of COVID-19 cases increased precipitously in the United States, policy makers and health officials marshalled their pandemic responses. As the economic impacts multiplied, anecdotal reports noted the increased use of web-based crowdfunding to defray these costs.

Objective

We examined the web-based crowdfunding response in the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States to understand the incidence of initiation of COVID-19–related campaigns and compare them to non–COVID-19–related campaigns.

Methods

On May 16, 2020, we extracted all available data available on US campaigns that contained narratives and were created between January 1 and May 10, 2020, on GoFundMe. We identified the subset of COVID-19–related campaigns using keywords relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic. We explored the incidence of COVID-19–related campaigns by geography, by category, and over time, and we compared the characteristics of the campaigns to those of non–COVID-19–related campaigns after March 11, when the pandemic was declared. We then used a natural language processing algorithm to cluster campaigns by narrative content using overlapping keywords.

Results

We found that there was a substantial increase in overall GoFundMe web-based crowdfunding campaigns in March, largely attributable to COVID-19–related campaigns. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic persisted and progressed, the number of campaigns per COVID-19 case declined more than tenfold across all states. The states with the earliest disease burden had the fewest campaigns per case, indicating a lack of a case-dependent response. COVID-19–related campaigns raised more money, had a longer narrative description, and were more likely to be shared on Facebook than other campaigns in the study period.

Conclusions

Web-based crowdfunding appears to be a stopgap for only a minority of campaigners. The novelty of an emergency likely impacts both campaign initiation and crowdfunding success, as it reflects the affective response of a community. Crowdfunding activity likely serves as an early signal for emerging needs and societal sentiment for communities in acute distress that could be used by governments and aid organizations to guide disaster relief and policy.

Article activity feed

  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.12.20211532: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: The University of Texas Southwestern Human Research Protection Program Policies, Procedures, and Guidance did not require institutional review board approval as all data were publicly available.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    The University of Texas Southwestern Human Research Protection Program Policies, Procedures, and Guidance did not require institutional review board approval as all data were publicly available.
    Human Research Protection Program
    suggested: None
    Analyses were performed using Python, version 3.7.2 (Python Software Foundation).
    Python
    suggested: (IPython, RRID:SCR_001658)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    While we were able to analyze the full available set of GoFundMe campaigns, which strengthened our study, it had several limitations. First, we used data from one crowdfunding platform only. While GoFundMe is the largest platform in the US by number of campaigns, our study may have suffered from selection bias. Because of the large number of campaigns, we are unable to validate that campaigns using COVID-related keywords were indeed designed to mitigate the effect of COVID-19. Moreover, while we note significant differences in campaign and funding characteristics between COVID-related and non-COVID-related campaigns, future work will be important to further understand reasons for these differences and their implications on long-term crowdfunding. Lastly, we only analyze the first few months of COVID-related campaigns; therefore, more longitudinal analysis will be important to understand more completely how peaks and troughs in COVID-19 incidence nationally and in particular, communities affect campaign frequency.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a protocol registration statement.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.2196/25429
  3. Version published to 10.2196/preprints.25429
  4. Version published to 10.1101/2020.10.12.20211532v1 on medRxiv