# Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/books/crowded-out-the-true-costs-of-crowdfunding-healthcare/
- Published: 2024-05-21T11:27:00+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

**GoFundMe now has over 100 million users worldwide, but who actually benefits from
healthcare crowdfunding? And what does its rise tell us about the relationship between
charity, technology, and social justice? Nora Kenworthy’s forensic investigation
is essential reading for anyone thinking seriously about the ethics and future of
giving.**

Over the past decade, charitable crowdfunding has exploded in popularity across 
the globe. Sites such as GoFundMe have transformed the ways we seek and offer help.
When faced with crises — especially medical ones — people are turning to online 
platforms that promise to connect them to the charity of the crowd. But what does
this phenomenon actually reveal about the changing ways we seek and provide care?

In _Crowded Out_, Nora Kenworthy examines how charitable crowdfunding so quickly
overtook public life, where it is taking us, and who gets left behind by this new
platformed economy. Although crowdfunding has become ubiquitous in our lives, it
is often misunderstood: rather than a friendly free market “powered by the kindness
of strangers,” crowdfunding is powerfully reinforcing inequalities and changing 
the way people think about and access healthcare.

Drawing on extensive research and rich storytelling, _Crowded Out_ demonstrates 
how crowdfunding for health is fuelled by, and further reinforces, financial and
moral “toxicities” in market-based healthcare systems. It offers a unique and distressing
look beneath the surface of some of the most popular charitable platforms, and helps
foster thoughtful discussions of how we can better respond to healthcare crises 
both small and large.

 * [**Buy this book**](https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0262548038?tag=219)

Although the book focuses primarily on the United States, the dynamics it exposes
are highly relevant to fundraisers and charity professionals in the UK and beyond.
For example, the role of platforms like GoFundMe in shifting responsibility from
the state to the individual; the racialised inequities of who succeeds in crowdfunding
campaigns, and the moral questions about who is deemed “deserving” of public generosity.

An excerpt from the book, exploring the historical precedents for crowdfunding’s
culture of selective deservingness, is available at [HistPhil](https://histphil.org/2024/07/12/crowded-out-the-dark-side-of-crowdfunding-healthcare-and-its-historical-precedents/).

## **About Nora Kenworthy**

[Nora Kenworthy](http://norakenworthy.com) is Associate Professor of Health Studies
at the University of Washington Bothell, with adjunct appointments in the Departments
of Anthropology and Global Health at the University of Washington Seattle. A writer,
professor, and public health expert, her work examines how politics, technology,
and inequality affect health.

Her writing has appeared in the American Journal of Public Health, Social Science
and Medicine, PLOS One, Scientific American, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles
Times. _Crowded Out_ is her second book; her first, _Mistreated: The Political Consequences
of the Fight Against AIDS in Lesotho_ (Vanderbilt University Press, 2017), won the
African Studies Association’s Bethwell A. Ogot Book Prize.

## **Reviews**

> “A powerful exposition on the morality of an economic and charitable system that
> forces the most vulnerable to become, at their moment of greatest need, digital
> campaigners on behalf of Big Healthcare. _Crowded Out_ also illustrates how the
> rise of crowdfunding is yet another chapter in the financialisation of charity,
> amassing private profits under the guise of doing public good.”
> **The Chronicle
> of Philanthropy**

> “With moral urgency and compelling clarity, Kenworthy offers a searing indictment
> of the symbiosis between Big Healthcare and Big Tech that allows them to grind
> out their billions off the backs of millions of Americans.”
> **Abdul El-Sayed, 
> Towsley Policymaker in Residence, Ford School of Public Policy, University of 
> Michigan; author of _Medicare for All: A Citizen’s Guide_**

> “A critically important book for anyone interested in what our healthcare system
> is really doing to patients and their families. Kenworthy skillfully weaves together
> patient stories and penetrating analyses to explore the dark side of a crowdfunding
> phenomenon that is deepening inequalities and perpetuating disturbing ideas about
> who deserves help in our society.”
> **Noam N. Levey, Senior Correspondent, KFF 
> Health News**

> “Nora Kenworthy’s excellent book exposes the failings of digital crowdfunding 
> in America’s dysfunctional health system, showing it to be ineffective, inefficient,
> inequitable, and totally incompatible with the goal of achieving universal health
> coverage.”
> **Robert Yates, Executive Director, Centre for Universal Health, Chatham
> House**