Life || Humor || Charity

GoFundMe…Really?

When it all gets too much

Created by KCB using MSDesigner to bring to life my words in explaining what image was in my head.

See what you think of these ‘requests for urgent financial aid’ that have been made:

• I have no money left as I spent my unemployment benefit in the betting shop. I need 200 (Insert your currency symbol here!) to see me through the weekend drinking session with my friends.
• I haven’t been on holiday this year and I need a break. I have seen a holiday for two weeks in (Insert destination here) and need 3000 to pay for it and give me a bit of spending money.
• I need a new cage for my stick insects, as my mother-in-law is coming next month, and the one they have is dirty, and she will moan at me. Help! I need 500 quickly.
• My favourite…I want to have a birthday party for my two-year-old, but the best price I have been quoted is 3200. I am a single Mum, please help me make my child's day.

Come on! 3200 for a kid's birthday party. It's not HER day you would be making — forget it! The child wouldn’t remember the day, let alone what happened or appreciate the amount spent!

It is so sad, as I have seen comments from obvious old ladies, very short of money themselves, offering a “Pound or two when I get my pension money on Friday.” Have these people no shame? Taking money from people living on pensions to fund a party?

Those were some of the more ridiculous requests that I think should have been refused by GoFundMe.

Originally, GoFundMe were set up so that people who genuinely needed financial help with a pressing problem could ask for it from total strangers as well as friends, and not have to go to a bank or loan company.

It was ‘Social Crowd-funding’ with the interest being paid in ‘Feel good for helping’ factors.

In the main, it has helped people achieve life-saving medical procedures, terminally ill children to have their final holiday with their parents, helped victims of abuse escape to refuges, bought electric wheelchairs, and many other things that right now, I can’t recall.

They vet the people asking. They do their best to make sure that the person is legitimate, that the cause is legitimate, and that no harm can come to either giver or receiver; however, their system is obviously not foolproof.

Enough now!

My Darling Husband (DH) is fed up with GoFundMe requests. Never a day goes by without someone sending him a link to GoFundMe.

A ‘Milestone’ birthday, a wedding, an urgent need for a new kitchen, etc, and these are from people he knows, so it makes it awkward to say no.

There did come a point where he exploded, “If I fund everyone that asked this week, I will have worked for nothing! Enough! No more.”

And that was that. He has funded nothing else since that day. Each request is deleted. Not read, not perused. Simply and efficiently deleted.

Recent events

Aside from a couple of those “Forget it, pal” situations I mentioned earlier, there was one time recently when I received a request and decided to help.

The situation was genuine, but I wasn’t completely convinced about the story behind it. Still, someone I knew (who also knew the person involved) confirmed it was real, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt and chipped in.

Turns out, I should have listened to my gut. The person receiving the help is a serial user, using people to pay for their lives for several years and in several places, and all the while moaning about the people who helped them. A user at best, a pathological liar at worst.

I will never again contribute to this type of cause, as I am now wary; Once bitten, twice shy. I have now joined DH in the practice of hitting the delete key.

I am a caring person. I donate every month to various charities in the UK: Ehler-Danlos Syndrome, Cancer, and The Blind. I do the Postcode Lottery too, and I win roughly once a year; however, it's only ever been half the cost of the monthly fee, but that's OK, as the rest goes to various charitable causes.

These causes urgently need ongoing funding to help people in real need — yet they don’t turn to platforms like GoFundMe, and I sometimes wonder why, and if they would get a better response if they did.

These causes are charities, but they are also social causes. Research into diseases that can affect all of us. Facilities that we could all use. Medical equipment that could be loaned or rented to people when they need it, such as stairlifts, wheelchairs, electric wheelchairs, etc.

Things that ‘Society’ may need to use.

You can’t afford it, don’t buy it.

We all face times when money is tight. We all want new clothes, a fresh carpet, or a nice holiday. But how desperate must someone be to create a “GoFundMe, please” campaign asking strangers for money to buy the things most of us save up for ourselves?

When did it become acceptable to ‘beg’ others for things you couldn’t be bothered to work for, to save for, to budget for?

My parents told me that if I couldn’t afford something, then I couldn’t have it until I had saved for it. I lived by this until DH and I bought a house — now that we couldn't afford without a mortgage; everything else we saved for, bought ‘nearly new’ or reconditioned and replaced as required.

Looks like we are going back to our youth now, as we are building a house and need extra funds for things we didn’t know we would need.

Do you think we should set up a GoFundMe campaign to help us, a couple of poor pensioners, build our retirement home?

Honestly, we are a deserving cause, and I am sure GoFundMe will approve our application!😱🤣

Created by KCB using my words, and the skills of MSDesigner to make them into the image I wrote…

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