Crowdfunding campaigns are a familiar sight on social media. Often set up for personal and upsetting reasons, they’ve helped many causes, from fundraising for charity in memory of a loved one who died, to much-needed medical care for a pet.
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There are also campaigns to help fund positive or creative endeavours. Scrolling through a crowdfunding website reveals fundraisers for people wanting to put on live-streamed theatre, save music venues from closure and even record their debut album. Other campaigns are set up by people struggling to stay afloat.
The crowdfunding platform GoFundMe claims to have seen a significant increase in fundraisers to help with rent and bills since the Covid-19 pandemic struck. According to their data, there was a 60% increase in campaigns featuring the word ‘rent’, and a 63% increase in those featuring ‘bills’ between 2019 and 2020. Campaigns featuring the word ‘therapy’ also increased 29% on their platform in that timeframe, they said, but they wouldn’t disclose exactly how many campaigns had been set up in either year.
JustGiving, another crowdfunding platform, told the BBC they had noticed a similar trend. “We saw a 157% increase in the number of all crowdfunding appeals when comparing the periods March 2019 – February 2020 and March 2020 – February 2021 (before and during the pandemic),” they said.
“Whilst this is partly attributable to a general rise in crowdfunding more broadly, there was a noticeably bigger increase in crowdfunding campaigns that have one or more of the key words rent, therapy, evicted, unemployed, surgery, or hardship, than those that didn’t.” Again, they wouldn’t disclose the exact number of campaigns, calling that figure “commercially sensitive”.
Eighteen-year-old Saul is one of those who’s had to appeal for help with living expenses, after he was kicked out of his parents’ house at the beginning of 2020. It was his friend, Jacob, who set up the campaign for him, after Saul lost his job as a chef.
“When lockdown happened, I needed somewhere to go, so I went into a St Basil’s hostel,” explains Saul, from Birmingham. “That was my first experience with groups that try and help younger people get back on their feet, and it was one of the worst experiences of my life. I just don’t think it was tailored for what I needed.”
Saul went to the council after he was thrown out of his family home, and was placed in the hostel by their homelessness service. “They don’t really take into account who’s living there,” he says. “It was a place where people were just coming out of prison, where there were drug problems, and it’s not a very good environment for anyone.”
He’s now in a rented shared house, but has been unable to find work, and is painfully aware of his mounting rent arrears. “I get universal credit at the moment, but because I’m in a private property I’m not eligible for more housing benefit,” he says. “I’m having to go into the money I’ve got to live off, which eats into my money for the month, so I’m having to rely on people like Jacob and a couple of other mates, which is a position I really don’t want to be in.”
Saul isn’t classed as homeless because he has a fixed abode at his house share, and as he still has contact with his parents, he’s not deemed estranged from them. He says that because of this, he can’t claim extra housing benefit as well as his universal credit. The crowdfunder was a last-ditch attempt by Jacob to help his friend clear the arrears, but unfortunately the campaign hasn’t raised very much. Saul says that Jacob and other friends have been helping to support him offline, though.
Birmingham City Council and St Basil’s told the BBC that the hostel caters for people aged 16-25. “Young people may have a range of support needs, and support will be tailored to fit those needs,” a spokesperson said.
The council explained that, in relation to housing benefit, “if the person is in private rented accommodation and isn’t working, they would be entitled to local housing allowance support via universal credit”. The Birmingham local housing allowance rate for someone living in one bedroom with shared facilities, like Saul,
Trans people 'feel lost' and turn to crowdfunding
It seems that how much a campaign raises – especially one for personal reasons – is somewhat down to luck, and how many people notice it and share it on their own social media. Kaiya, 25, (pictured in main image) has raised £4,110 at the time of writing, for a campaign to have gender affirmative surgery.
Fundraisers for transgender healthcare have also seen an increase from 2019 to 2020, with GoFundMe claiming they saw a 44% rise in this kind of campaign. Kaiya, a trans woman from Leeds, was referred to the Leeds Gender Identity Clinic – the second of the UK’s two gender clinics, as well as London’s Tavistock Centre – four years ago. She had her first appointment with a psychiatrist there in October 2020.
“I know the long waiting list isn’t the clinic’s fault, they are underfunded,” she says. “But I’ve found that, if you don’t act on your own, sometimes nothing happens.”
Kaiya has a full-time job in insurance, but says she doesn’t earn enough to put money aside for the breast augmentation she wants, and waiting to see if she could have the surgery on the NHS could be years. Initially, she was wary about doing a crowdfunder, because she worried about people’s reactions to her asking for money.
“I thought about it for a while, but I kept talking myself out of it,” Kaiya remembers. “I had doubts about how much support I’d get. Because it’s such a personal issue I’m fundraising for, a surgery, I thought I wouldn’t actually get that much help with it. But one of my friends convinced me to do it. I feel like fundraisers are quite a common thing for young trans people – I think a lot of us feel so lost at the moment in terms of the support and care we can get. I have seen a few successful campaigns of people who’ve raised enough money to have surgery – I think people do underestimate how helpful people are and how selfless they can be.”
While Saul and Kaiya had different experiences in terms of the success of their crowdfunders, both spoke about a sense of community among their peers, especially under the shadow of the pandemic.
“It’s really good that I’ve had friends like Jacob who’ve stuck by me over the past year,” Saul says. “I’ll be okay, but other people won’t. Especially with Covid, you can’t make any decisions to further your life and progress with what you want to do. A lot of kids don’t know what direction they want to go in life.”
Kaiya has similar sentiments. “A lot of people are affected quite badly by the pandemic and the current economic situation. So many people have been laid off or made redundant, or are feeling lost and hopeless. We can’t physically be with each other but through online campaigns we can show our support,” she says.
“There’s quite a strong sense of community, not just in the trans community but online presence in general,” Kaiya adds. “My campaign was shared by people I hadn’t spoken to for ages – the response was overwhelming, in a good way. I think a lot of younger people are struggling, and feeling left behind. It only takes a few minutes to put a fiver.”
Following her graduation Lucy, who now wears a splint on one leg and uses a walking stick, attended a casting for Zebedee model management and was signed up.
Lucy's modelling career took off and she always likes to to flaunt her collection of colourful and sparkly mobility aids, which she hopes will help increase the representation and visibility of disability in the media.
She has so far worked with brands including Ann Summers, Love Honey and Missguided.
"I don't feel any shame about posing in lingerie," she says. "Disabled and sexy aren't two mutually exclusive terms.
"But you very rarely see any disabled people in fashion campaigns let alone lingerie campaigns, so that's something we need to keep working towards."
Lucy hopes to continue increasing the visibility of disability and raising awareness of encephalitis and was a winner at The Role Model Awards 2019 for her campaign work.