The power of viral crowdfunding campaigns in a year of bad news

People on the other end of a viral GoFundMe campaign share how it's changed their lives.
By Rebecca Ruiz  on 
The power of viral crowdfunding campaigns in a year of bad news
Viral GoFundMe campaigns for the Waffle House hero and others rewarded acts of kindness in important ways in 2018. Credit: vicky leta / mashable

When James Shaw Jr. decided to launch a GoFundMe in honor of victims of a deadly shooting at a Waffle House in Nashville earlier this year, he set a modest goal of $15,000.

Shaw, however, had just become famous as the "Waffle House hero" after tackling and disarming the alleged gunman. The GoFundMe he launched with a few of his friends quickly went viral, and it ultimately raised $241,000.

"I was doing it just to help out, 'cause I know losing a child in that kind of way, and you have to plan that funeral, as young as they were, they probably didn’t have insurance," says Shaw. "It was just my way of trying to ease the pain."

"There’s kind people still out there. Honest people still out there."

As he watched money pour in from donors around the world, Shaw suddenly became the recipient of a separate viral GoFundMe campaign launched on his behalf by a journalist in New York. It was entitled "Help The Waffle House Hero."

That fund brought in $225,000, a staggering amount for a 29-year-old father who worked as a wire technician for a cell phone company.

With the help of a financial planner, Shaw invested $180,000 and has plans to buy a house. The funds raised for victims have been given to them and their families, save $15,000 that Shaw used to launch the James Shaw Jr. Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness about mental health issues and to stopping violence.

"There’s kind people still out there. Honest people still out there," says Shaw. "There are people that want to help; not everybody's a crook, not everybody’s trying to get over on you."

Shaw's hard-won optimism reflects what most people seem to want out of viral crowdfunding: their faith in humanity restored. Internet platforms have long made it possible to reward a stranger's act of kindness, or help them in a time of need. But crowdfunding in 2018, amidst the daily onslaught of no-good, terrible news, presented countless opportunities for collective redemption.

"Rather than being overwhelmed by the news, people instead started taking action with every event by sharing, donating, or even starting a GoFundMe to make an immediate impact," Rob Solomon, GoFundMe CEO, said to Mashable in a statement.

We could help teens who'd just survived a horrific mass shooting recover from their injuries — and build a political movement. We could seed a legal defense fund with $22 million to aid people who've been sexually harassed or assaulted at work. We could help strangers pay for insulin, organ transplants, school supplies, and maternity leave.

"When [people] get a chance to give to others, it’s reinforcing that basically people are good, and because we’re good we want to help others in a less positive position we might be in," says Tim Seiler, clinical professor of philanthropic studies at Indiana University's Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. "In a gloomy time, maybe we’re looking a little harder and .... searching for ways to do good things."

Some criticized feel-good crowdfunding campaigns as a distraction from bigger problems: the gun lobby's influence over politicians; a broken, expensive health care system; nonexistent or anemic family leave policies; low wages that make it impossible to get ahead. You could rightfully look at altruistic crowdfunding and argue that such generosity papers over all that's rotten in America. Yet people on the receiving end of these campaigns see it differently. The generosity becomes a chance to put themselves on a path they've always imagined for themselves, and to give back to others.

When Walter Carr's life was transformed by viral altruism this summer, he was a 20-year-old college student who regularly walked miles to work in Birmingham, Alabama, because his 2003 Nissan Altima constantly broke down. On the evening before his first day at a moving company in July, Carr realized he'd have to walk 20 miles overnight to reach his job by daybreak. So he set out on foot for a 7-hour long journey. When the woman who hired him as a mover learned about what he'd gone through to show up on time, she launched a GoFundMe campaign entitled "Thank You Walter" on his behalf.

"Walter’s story touched not only my heart, the hearts of his employers and coworkers at Bellhops, but also the hearts of hundreds of people who’ve read his story on Facebook," she wrote. "In the past 24 hours, I’ve received hundreds of messages from folks trying to find a way to help Walter with his car trouble so I put this page together to help."

The campaign page featured a video of Bellhops CEO, Luke Marklin, presenting a shocked Carr with his own Ford Escape as a gift. He later wrote in a Medium post that "[p]roviding Walter with a reliable form of transportation ... felt like the right thing to do."

"When people’s sense of empathy is aroused, their tendency I believe is to rally to the cause," says Seiler. "They start from a premise of, 'I trust these people are doing the right thing, and I’m going to do the right thing.'"

"I didn’t think my 20-mile journey meant anything to anybody."

Overnight, Carr became an extraordinarily lucky man simply because his story moved strangers who sensed they could make a meaningful difference in his life -- they only had to click "donate now." Even if countless people make unfair sacrifices every day to reach work, Carr's circumstances presented the public with an opportunity to symbolically ease one person's burden -- to the tune of nearly $92,000.

The randomness of his changed fortune was not lost on Carr.

"For my story to touch so many people, it’s a dream come true, but I want to do more," Carr recently told Mashable. "I didn’t think my 20-mile journey meant anything to anybody."

Carr still has trouble believing the Ford Escape parked outside his house belongs to him, but he's been driving it to school and to his job at Bellhops. Carr worked with a financial planner to set the GoFundMe money aside to pay for college, where he's studying physical and occupational therapy. Once the campaign reached $66,000, he decided to give whatever donations came next to the Birmingham Education Foundation, a nonprofit organization that prepares students for "college, career, and life readiness." Carr participated in the foundation's program as a high school student and wanted to give back.

"I just love helping people and giving them the opportunity to know there’s still good people out there," says Carr.

Not every viral GoFundMe giving story ended so well this year. One 2017 campaign about a couple who met a veteran experiencing homelessness turned out to be a scam that brought in $400,000 from sympathetic donors. (GoFundMe is refunding donations to those who contributed.) And though successful crowdfunding campaigns often involve trying to remedy underlying injustice or unfairness that feels universal, one person recently launched a popular GoFundMe effort to fund President Trump's border wall, upending the notion that crowdfunding is most effective when it's about doing good.

Jordan Taylor, a 21-year-old college student from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, didn't ever think about crowdfunding campaigns until he suddenly became the subject of one. He understands why people would be skeptical of giving campaigns. "Plenty of people in the world could get a GoFundMe, and they would just blow it," he says. "That is a scary thing to think about, but it’s a lot of people out here in the world, they want better but they don’t have the money to do better."

"I went from working, going from paycheck to paycheck, to I have $124,000, just from other people."

One afternoon in August, Taylor happened to notice a young man staring while he stocked groceries at Rouse's, a supermarket chain. Taylor invited the teen to join him, an exchange the boy's father filmed on his phone. The father didn't mention his son has autism. The next day, Taylor discovered on his way to work that the family was so heartened by his kindness that they started a GoFundMe to "Send Jordan from Rouse’s to School."

"I went from working, going from paycheck to paycheck, to I have $124,000, just from other people," says Taylor. He, too, was given a car once the story appeared in local news outlets.

What donors didn't know is that Taylor had previously enrolled in school, but had to drop out when Baton Rouge experienced a devastating flood in 2016. Then money forced him to delay again. Within weeks, after receiving the GoFundMe donations, he enrolled in and began attending Grambling State University to study secondary education mathematics.

"They didn’t have to give me their money," says Taylor. "They could have just said something nice about it on the internet and went about their day, but they went beyond, put their trust in me and helped get me back into school."

It's anecdotes like these that made 2018 bearable for people who felt powerless to change much else in the world. Crowdfunding campaigns that reward kindness, bravery, or decency shouldn't be the cure to what ails us, but they can be a temporary salve. The generosity they reveal would be even more transformational, of course, if donors consistently voted for politicians and policies that championed fairness, opportunity, and equity for all. But, at the very least, these campaigns remind people of their shared humanity.

"If you believe the person doesn’t really deserve all that, maybe you shouldn’t donate to them," says Taylor. "But ... if you believe that a person would do right, you have to have faith until they show you otherwise."

Rebecca Ruiz
Rebecca Ruiz

Rebecca Ruiz is a Senior Reporter at Mashable. She frequently covers mental health, digital culture, and technology. Her areas of expertise include suicide prevention, screen use and mental health, parenting, youth well-being, and meditation and mindfulness. Prior to Mashable, Rebecca was a staff writer, reporter, and editor at NBC News Digital, special reports project director at The American Prospect, and staff writer at Forbes. Rebecca has a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and a Master's in Journalism from U.C. Berkeley. In her free time, she enjoys playing soccer, watching movie trailers, traveling to places where she can't get cell service, and hiking with her border collie.


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