The Pitfalls of Crowdfunding
Have you donated online recently? If so, you need to read this.
By Mitch Clarke, Marketing —
‘Take caution,’ Cleveland Police stated in a recent notice given to the Fairview Hospital Birthing Center. According to the report, Dawn Brown, has been running a pregnancy scam online since last November. An article on Cleveland.com cites that she raised around $775 in just one week.
Not Sick, Just Greedy
Brown has been telling acquaintances online that she is pregnant and has stage IV breast cancer. She has pleaded for support on Facebook and GoFundMe with relative success. These pleads, however, hold no truth as she is not pregnant nor does she have breast cancer. Those donating to Brown’s ‘cause’ aren’t paying for medical expenses, but rather her living expenses.
Legitimizing Crowdfunding
This kind of behavior on crowdfunding sites puts into question the legitimacy of every campaign. Are the people behind these fundraisers truly who they say they are? How can we identify if a fundraiser is legitimate or not? There are two solutions to help, IdentityDetect™ and IntegrityDetect™. First, IdentityDetect™ which would verify the identity of those wishing to crowdfund by validating their personal information. This identity verification service would stop people from being able to impersonate others as a way to raise money. Coupled with IntegrityDetect™, a new integrity testing and assessment tool, crowdfunding sites would be able to secure their sites by confirming the identity and testing the integrity of their users. Integrity testing would help further solidify the legitimacy of the campaign by analyzing how the crowdfunding user would react to dishonest situations. These two products would work together to protect the value of crowdfunding campaigns.
