Last week, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland detailed $8.9 billion in measures to tackle the rising inflation — currently at a 30-year high — in a new ‘Affordability Plan’ to a high-profile audience at the Empire Club in Toronto. It includes free dental coverage for people earning less than $90,000 a year, increasing the Old Age Security by a mere 10 percent, and a few other things. 

In my estimation, none of these measures actually gets to tackling the systemic affordability issues. 

Minister Freeland might be suffering from a lack of perspective on what the affordability crisis looks like up close. Where can she gain that perspective? Reading the stories on crowdfunding platforms. She’d learn a ton. 

People who are struggling to make ends meet are turning to crowdfunding platforms for support. Medical expenses related GoFoundMe campaigns alone raised a total of over $2 billion US from around 21.7 million donations in the past five years. Experts say that personal campaigns on GoGetFunding and GoFundMe have significantly increased since the pandemic began. Take a quick browse of these platforms and you’ll see there are people seeking support for rent, food and monthly bills — like a mother of two in Brandon, Manitoba who had a pipe burst in her kitchen and with the price of oil right now, could not keep her oil furnace running. She had to resort to burning some cardboard she found for heat in her home. 

You’ll see campaigns for seniors who need to move — like a disabled senior and her two cats in Toronto who can no longer afford rent in the city but is also unable to cover all the moving expenses to get out of the place she’s currently in by the deadline given by her landlord.  

You’ll see campaigns for medical expenses support — like a rural family in Fort McMurray, Alberta needing to cover travel and accommodation expenses to Edmonton for medical treatment because of the lack of specialty health services in rural areas. 

And campaigns for people who can no longer pay tuition — like a student in Ottawa who cannot cope with the rise in college tuition and living costs to finish their final year, and fears that more student loans would set them back even more. 

And you’ll see campaigns to buy tools for employment — like a woman in Surrey, BC who is on disability and cannot afford to purchase a laptop, printer and printer paper to apply for jobs and do work — technologies that have become essential these days.

There’s loads more. These stories are heartbreaking. Many of them were too difficult for me to read. 

But this is the consequence of a so-called progressive country hanging on to an outdated, fragmented and broken social support system that doesn’t listen to lived experiences and was never designed to help people at the margins live flourishing lives. 

The failure of our social services and benefits systems to keep up with lived experience is becoming less sustainable by the day. Those measures in the Affordability Plan that Minister Freeland announced at the Empire Club last week will do absolutely frap-all (pardon my language) for the people in the stories I highlighted. And there are thousands of such stories in communities across Canada.  

The fact that people who cannot afford life are turning to GoFundMe and GoGetFunding in large numbers is a state failure. It’s a visible demonstration of how disconnected our elected officials and policymakers are from lived experience, and how inequitable our social policies and social safety nets are. Anyone in the funding world: Pay attention to the stories on crowdfunding platforms right now with the rise in inflation—and you’ll have ample evidence on where to direct support. 

The unfortunate thing is, most of these personal campaigns will not meet their goals. The platforms are littered with unsuccessful campaigns. None of the 50 or so stories that I read are on track to reach their goals, including the ones I highlighted above. University of Washington doctoral student Mark Igra’s research on inequality in crowdfunding highlights that nine out of 10 campaigns do not reach their financial goals, and the median campaign raises only a few thousand dollars. It also highlights that crowdfunding campaigns seem to work best for people with very large social media followings. In an op-ed to Scientific American, he notes that “before a worthy crowdfunding campaign can receive a donation, it must first get a donor’s attention, typically via a post on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.” 

However, most of these people simply don’t have the time or capability to harness the power of their stories on social media. They’re busy working overtime to make ends meet, caring for sick loved ones, or dealing with any of the other myriad life circumstances that necessitated the crowdfunding campaign in the first place. 

Crowdfunding is unlikely to be helpful for people where there are stark income inequalities, social disparities and where social media popularity matters. Meanwhile, mainstream media often celebrates and glorifies crowdfunding as a win-win without highlighting the systemic issues and policy failures that cause families to resort to crowdfunding to pay rent or tuition or cover grocery bills. North Shore News even highlighted North Vancouver as the most generous Canadian city in 2021 as named by GoFundMe — but it’s worth noting that Vancouver also has the most expensive housing market in all of North America. 

Generosity is good but it cannot be the answer to a broken social benefits system. At Future of Good’s recent Women’s Economic Resilience summit, professor Caroline Shenaz Hossein at the University of Toronto Scarborough asked, “How do we get the state to respect these grassroots efforts? And hold the state accountable? We can glorify mutual aid, but that lets big philanthropy and government off the hook.” 

If Canada’s social policies and benefits system are once again failing to help people live flourishing lives, what can be done? Here’s where I’d start: Every personal crowdfunding campaign reveals a story, a systemic issue, and an insight into which social support services, policies, benefits and funding are letting people fall through the cracks. These stories are evidence that the federal government’s affordability plans and actions are proving to be grossly ineffective. 

In 2021, GoFundMe’s CEO Tim Cadogan addressed the U.S. Congress to say, “We can’t do your job for you.” Yet, in the U.S. and in Canada, COVID-related support programs are ending. This moment is another chance for governments and civil society organizations to reimagine care and benefits for the 21st century, and stop the dehumanizing and disempowering practice of crowdfunding basic needs. 

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