Crowd Funding is getting out of control

On February 19th, Toronto mourned the loss of three year old Elijah Marsh. He was the little boy who wandered from his home at 4AM. He froze to death wearing just a t-shirt, diaper and boots. A heartbroken citizen set up a crowd funding fundraiser to help cover the cost for his funeral. The initial goal was to raise $20,000. Citizens from Toronto and beyond raised $173,000.00.

Solomon Chan proposed to Jennifer Carter last year. They made plans to marry this August. Not too long ago, Solomon’s liver cancer came back. Doctors only gave him a few months to live. A crowd funding fundraiser was set up to move their wedding date from August to April. Fifty-thousand dollars was raised. Solomon and Jennifer married on April 11^th and are now spending what’s left of his life as husband and wife.

Thirty-two year old Toni Morgan is about to live her dream. Just before getting kicked out of high school, her VP told her that she “would never have a University degree”.  With no high school diploma and after spending years bouncing from shelter to shelter, she received her Bachelor of Arts from Ryerson. If that wasn’t enough icing on the cake, she recently got accepted into Harvard University. There was just one problem. The cost for tuition and board is $71,000 USD. Morgan turned to crowd funding and to date has raised $95,127.00.

On Mother’s Day, baby Chloe was born to proud parents Wesley Branch and Ada Guan. The couple was traveling from B.C. to Japan when Ada gave birth to a child she didn’t know she was carrying. Medical bills came up to $2,000.00. Branch originally set up a crowd funding fundraiser for $50,000.00. It was later changed to $5,000.00 after a huge back lash from the public.

I can understand why people would want to give for the first three causes that were mentioned but why is money being raised to cover medical bills?

It’s stories like this one when I think to myself, people are taking advantage of their situations to raise money. I can understand that the couple may not have had $2,000.00 to pay their medical bill but their situation isn’t that serious. They should have turned to family and close friends and left it at that.

People really need to evaluate the seriousness of their situation before turning to crowd funding. If that doesn’t happen, we’ll be seeing thousands of pleas to raise money for the smallest of situations.

In what instances is it okay/not okay to set up a crowd funding fundraiser?

Is crowd funding slowly getting out of control?

When you get a chance, please visit my friend Tyrone’s blog. His posts are insightful and very thought provoking. See his blog here.

Thanks for reading and keep smiling :)