In 2017 a GoFundMe campaign was launched to help a homeless veteran, Johnny Bobbitt, after he supposedly used his last $20 to assist a stranded motorist. The campaign, initiated by Kate McClure and Mark D'Amico, garnered widespread support and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, the situation turned sour when it was revealed that the funds were allegedly mismanaged, leading to legal action. In November 2018, charges were filed against McClure, D'Amico, and Bobbitt for theft by deception.
“Laurie
Styron: ‘You know all of the crowdfunding sites, they have their own, you know,
processes in place to try to root out and prevent fraud, but the fact is...there's really no
perfect way before the fact to prevent a scammer from uploading pictures,
coming up with a sad story, and asking you for money. There's really no way to
totally prevent that even with some good efforts in place to do so.’”
“Laurie Styron: ‘I just think it's important for people to understand what they're looking at. The internet is a great thing and automation can be a great thing and crowdsourcing can be a great thing depending on how that data is used. So when these kinds of ratings and these very large online databases, when they're based on crowd sourcing, meaning when the charities just essentially upload flattering information about themselves and then that's what's published and that's what the transparency seal is based on, well no one's vetting that to make sure that the charity is being honest or complete with what they're telling you. And then when the ratings are based on automation in order to be able to provide ratings on such a large volume of charities, you know I wish it were that simple to just divide one number by another in the tax form and be able to tell you that it's a good charity or not. But it's, it's not that simple. Charity financial reporting is incredibly complex, and, you know, we've identified so many instances of charities to which we've given failing grades for spending 35%, in some cases 11%, of their cash on programs, legitimate programs; they get perfect scores in some of these databases.”’
“Laurie Styron: ‘The first kind is people who know exactly what they're doing, they have stacked their board of directors with family members. They have some sort of kickback arrangement possibly with a professional fundraising company to which they funnel millions of dollars every year. These are people who [are] exploiting the charity essentially to enrich themselves. The, the other type of bad charity that we see, people who are incredibly passionate about the cause that they're working in. So say like a leader of an animal rescue charity, and they've maybe gotten themselves into a contract, a bad contract with a for-profit professional fundraising company that you know is taking 80% of whatever is raised. Sometimes people who are very passionate about a cause such as rescuing injured or sick animals, they might not have an accounting or a legal background or a business background to understand when they're getting in a little bit over their heads on the business side in terms of what are my fiduciary duties to the organization to run it efficiently and effectively and within the bounds of the accounting and reporting legal requirements.”’
“Laurie Styron: ‘ You know there's a lot of people who were so taken in by this story, and I was one of them, as I said, and they were so heartbroken when the truth came out. And the danger is that situations like this turn people off to donating because they had put their trust into people and they had put their heart into a story and then it turned out to not be true. And it can really make people shy away and become very cynical about donating in the future, either to a crowdfunding campaign or even to charity generally.'"
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