A crowd-funding campaign has so far raised over $173,000 for the family of a Toronto three-year old who wandered away from his grandmother’s apartment and was found frozen on February 19th. The mother of Elijah Marsh thanked everyone who had donated to the online fundraiser which was originally set up by a Toronto man to raise money for the child’s funeral.
‘Your love has shone a light’
“Thank you to every single person who has thought of Elijah during this time,” Georgette Marsh said in a statement released Sunday. “Your love has shone a light on us and his memory lives on through all of you.”
Fundraisers are not surprised by the overwhelming response. “It touches people’s hearts,” says Ken Wyman, professor in the post-graduate program in fundraising at Humber College in Toronto. “Who can’t imagine having a curious three-year old wander away and the worst could happen and, sadly in this case, it did.”
ListenSome nasty effects
Similar fundraisers have sometimes had unintended and nasty consequences though, he notes. Money raised for the family of Eric Garner who was choked to death by New York police has not been transferred to the family and members are said to be fighting amongst themselves.
Reports of a man in Detroit who had to walk 21 miles to work every day elicited donations of $350,000 to buy him a car. He has since had death threats, is in hiding, and is looking for another place to live.
Good news, bad news
“So we have good news—people are generous. And we have bad news—some people are crazy,” notes Wyman.
Traditional, registered charities in Canada and the U.S. are strictly controlled. There are structures in place to make them accountable and they face annual audits. But spontaneous crowd-funding has no such structure.
‘No one is accountable’
“No one is accountable for the funds. The crowd-funding organization turns the money over, or at least is supposed to turn the money over, and then it’s up to the family. And that can raise all kinds of problems,” says Wyman. “And you and I don’t ever really know what happened to our donations, unlike with a real charity.”
That said, he adds charities would do well to learn from the popularity of crowd funding so that they can quickly respond to events and people’s impulse to do something to help.
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