Monday, August 25, 2014

#GoFundMe Cashin' In on #Ferguson Outrage

On August 13th, Adner Marcelin created the GoFundMe page for the Michael Brown Memorial Fund, and in 11 days the goal of raising $200K has been met and exceeded expectations. In asking for support, the site's author writes, Michael Brown was an 18 year old that was killed by a Ferguson Police Officer on Saturday, August 9th.  His family is now seeking justice for Michael’s death.  Their pursuit for justice will be lengthy and hard but with the support of the community they will get justice.  If you are willing to support Michael’s family please donate to Michael Brown’s Memorial Fund.  These funds will assist his family with costs that they will acquire as they seek justice on Michael’s behalf. These funds will not be used for legal fees; all funds will be given to the family of Michael Brown.  We appreciate your support.

Gofundme.com is cashing in on the tragedy of Ferguson, MO with multiple campaigns. At least three GoFundMe pages exist for Michael Brown's family. In addition to the Michael Brown Memorial Fund, The Brown Siblings Memorial Fund, created August 12th by DeMarco Davidson, has earned $2,403 out of a requested $10K to date, and the Michael Brown Jr. Fundraiser has earned $4,500 out of the requested $5K. In 12 days, these three pages have earned $249,542  of  which  5% ($12,477) goes to GoFundMe.
August 17th the Support Officer Darren Wilson fund was created and completely funded in seven days to the tune of $234,910. A similar account to Support Officer Wilson was created by the nonprofit Shield of Hope on August 21st and has raised $143,904 in four days and will most likely meet the requested goal of $250K by the end of the day. These two accounts have earned $378,814 of which 5% ($18,941) goes to GoFundMe. 

Add in over 30 additional accounts to fund transportation to protest, aide for protesters, and media equipment replacement, and GoFundMe stands to make considerable more due to the chaos surrounding Michael Brown's death.

Even more curious is the fact that despite GoFundMe's homepage promoting the Michael Brown Memorial Fund as "popular," the page to Support Officer Wilson is raising more money is less amount of time. Quite obviously, the page to support Wilson is more popular than the one to support Brown; however, Officer Wilson's page is not promoted nor is it easily searchable. Typing Darren Wilson, Officer Wilson, Support Officer Wilson will NOT bring up the page.

Evidently, upon threats of boycotting by those who were offended by the Support Officer Wilson page and some of the comments made by donors, GoFundMe, in its attempt to appease those outraged, disabled the comments and keywords for Officer Wilson support pages. Activist Shaun King began the boycott last Friday:






But Unicorns wonder if this outrage is really about racist comments from donors or is it that the Wilson account is outraising the Brown account with more donors in less amount of time?  If King and his activist buddies believe GoFundMe is going to turn down revenue, they are delusional. 

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