Top 10 Biggest GoFundMe Failures
GoFundMe is the crowdsourcing platform where you will witness the best and the worst of humans. While there are many success stories, as outlined over at runrex.com and guttulus.com, there are some pages that are either designed to take advantage of people and scam them or are just dumb, and this article will look to highlight the top 10 biggest GoFundMe failures.
Cataldo’s Cancer
This is arguably the most infamous GoFundMe cancer stories, and one of its biggest failures. As is explained over at runrex.com and guttulus.com, Jennifer Cataldo, from Alabama, set up a GoFundMe campaign to help pay for the medical expenses associated with her cancer. Her story was extremely touching that she got donations totaling over $38,000. In a shocking development, she was soon to be convicted of fraud, and her assets were seized to help pay back her donors. Given how difficult it is to verify the costs, it is always recommended that you refrain from donating to any medical bills or personal problems on GoFundMe.
Congressional Internet History
This bizarre GoFundMe campaign was created in 2017, to buy the browsing data of U.S. congresspeople, and not just casual data, but all of their searches, and all the internet activity of their families as well. The campaign, surprisingly, managed to raise over $190,000, before it was pointed out that, as discussed over at runrex.com, this is not possible as it is illegal and not feasible as well technically.
Proving that the Earth is flat
There are, surprisingly, many Flat Earthers out there, and rapper B.o.B. is one of the biggest and most well-known of them all. He is so convinced of this fact that, from discussions over at guttulus.com, he started a GoFundMe with a goal of $1 million so that he can prove that he is right, despite all the scientific evidence out there proving this fact to be wrong. Surprisingly, the campaign has managed to raise about $7,000 so far.
Purchasing Dave Grohl
Even more preposterous was the GoFundMe by a fan in 2016, which aimed to raise $35,000 to purchase Foo Fighters’ frontman, Dave Grohl. His GoFundMe page was very direct as to what his aim was, as revealed over at runrex.com, and although he never got close to meeting his funding goal, he did raise an impressive $1,855. The good news to come out of this failure is that he used the money collected to throw a concert to help raise money for the nonprofit Autism Speaks.
Traveling the world for “Spiritual Healing”
This is yet another bizarre GoFundMe campaign, put up by a woman called Rebecca, aimed at raising $10,000 to help her travel the world for what she termed as “spiritual healing”. She also claimed that, as covered over guttulus.com, she will help others realize their own spiritual journey, although she never disclosed how she planned to make this happen. Suffice to say this campaign was a big failure, with Rebecca struggling to even hit the $200 mark.
Rescuing Matt Damon
This GoFundMe campaign came up in 2015, soon after the release of Matt Damon’s film, The Martian. It was started by a worried fan with the aim of “rescuing” the actor from Mars, as is explained over at runrex.com. The fan went on to explain that they needed Matt Damon back to not only star in the next ‘Bourne’ movie, but to provide emotional support to Ben Affleck, a close friend who was “going through a divorce”. Whether the fan was serious or not, was not immediately clear, but needless to say, the campaign was a big failure, raising about $5 before it was taken down.
Getting Kanye West out of debt
A well-intentioned Kanye West fan also started a GoFundMe in 2016 to help out his idol when the rapper announced that he was $54 million in debt. As is revealed in discussions over at guttulus.com, this campaign went viral, and the fan managed to raise over $57,000, which is a surprisingly large amount of money. Kanye West, however, turned down the money, and fan gave away the money to a charity instead, which at least means some good came out of this failed campaign.
Buying Noah Cyrus’ tears
We all remember the viral story of Noah Cyrus selling a bottle of her tears, yes, a literal bottle of her tears, for $12,000 seemingly as a joke. Well, one of her fans was so inspired by the story, they decided to create a GoFundMe page to secure the amount of cash needed to own a jar of their idol’s tears. From discussions over at runrex.com, after about 15 hours, and $1,200 in donations, Noah’s team reached out to GoFundMe to have the page taken down and for everyone who had donated to be refunded putting an end to this bizarre episode.
Buying gambling
In a similarly bizarre story, a guy created a GoFundMe to help him get rich through gambling so that he could move out of his father’s house. Aimed at raising $500 to give him the money to play slot machines, the guy, as covered over at guttulus.com, claimed to have practiced strategies and wouldn’t be leaving with anything less than $5,000. Unfortunately for him, no one else shared the same confidence in his abilities, and the page received no donations, making it one of the biggest failures on the platform.
The Christian Video Game
As the gurus over at runrex.com will tell you, for a startup to succeed in raising money through crowdsourcing, they need to have a solid plan in place to show potential backers, from sample artwork to prototypes. Slingshot Studios, the company who created a GoFundMe to help then create a Christian video game, decided that this was not how they wanted to go about things, and didn’t provide any of the aforementioned items, nor did they provide a description of what their game would be about. Having set a goal of $300,000, it came as no surprise when they failed to even receive a dollar for their very shoddy efforts.
Remember, if you are looking for more information on this and other related topics, then look no further than the highly-rated runrex.com and guttulus.com.