I’m an Australian creator of a GoFundMe for a long-term friend from the USA who is in a coma in hospital in Thailand. The GoFundMe is for his international friends to send funds to the hospital for his treatment and for his dependent family.
Joe’s difficulties in being 70 were known to us. He has been frustrated for a long time in trying to receive his pension by cheque from the USA, unaware he needed to give the pension fund his bank details to receive direct credit of his pension payments. He had nearly sorted this change out.
Areas that can affect crowdfunding a smooth GoFundMe campaign:
The intricacies of nationality, proof of identity, borders, healthcare, insurance, pension payments, bank technology protocols, international anti-money-laundering laws, online scams, time zones, methods and availability of communication methods, local business working days and time zones, IT support staff availability and support request loads, individual familiarity with use of technology.
➡️Too long; didn’t read?⁉️
But we are are a step further in our journey of being there for Joe when he really needs us.
When my latest GoFundMe update appeared on my Facebook feed was this notice above it from Facebook:
Ask your community for support
When you need to raise money for something or someone important to you, your friends can help. Create a fundraiser on Facebook in a few quick steps.
[name] [name] and 111 other friends have donated through Facebook.
Raise Money
I’ve used Facebook fundraisers, but I also know many Americans who are (also statistically the greatest national demographic) unlikely to trust Facebook.
Similarly, I see many people in Australia and online who do not trust what they dismiss as Social Media.
My theory:
Americans partly wanted to be special when they opened Facebook accounts in around 2009.
In 2009 Facebook was a very different beast.
By around 2012 all your friends in high income countries had seen when you’d added a friend and pounced to add them, and new users were bombarded with requests from “friendly” strangers. Facebook became a frenzied Availability Cascade of competing Friend Count tallies.
So they thought they were different by not using it any more.
I’ll mention some stuff that might change how some of us living in or near their birthplace might be used to thinking.
In 2019 I’ve seen a livestream of Mark Zuckerberg in a discussion with leaders in future human medical technology and nanotechnology
During the discussion, there was a very fast-moving flow of comments being posted by people with names most likely from India and Asia, all saying how much they love Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook and how it’s helped them and their families.
Fast forward a bit, I watched Eliud Kipchoge and the Nike team live on YouTube as they broke the 2 hour barrier for a man’s marathon running record.
During that livestream, another very-fast flow of supportive and enthusiastic comments were being posted by people with names of African origin.
A couple of days ago, I saw the latest video on Facebook from the World Economic Forum.
Estonia is now 4th in the world for child education standards.
Yesterday, I joined up to check out a Google Cloud live session of broadcasts on IT, AI, Cloud Computing, etc.
Most of the experts presenting had Asian names.
It occurs to me that this sort of global visibility and transparency can seem incongruous to people who didn’t learn about it before 2010, have avoided it since, or haven’t known how to look for it on what is often dismissed as Social Media.
Yet we still have transparency issues with transmitting and remitting help where we need it.
Zenmode 