Imagine scrolling through Facebook one evening when you come across a picture of a young person lying in a hospital bed... The caption says he needs an urgent operation, and his family has been able to raise only ₦350,000 out of the ₦2 million required... There is a bank account number underneath, followed by a desperate appeal for help... So You look at the picture again, the story sounds painful.. The family sounds helpless, and the deadline is getting closer.
You may not have millions to give but you have ₦5,000 sitting in your account.. You tell yourself that if twenty people like you contribute something, it could make a difference and so you send the money... you feel good because you believe you have helped somebody who genuinely needs it but a few days later, another post appears. Someone claims the fundraising campaign was fake.. The hospital allegedly knows nothing about the patient and the account receiving donations belongs to someone who has disappeared.. Suddenly, that ₦5,000 means something different because It is no longer just money you lost. It is the feeling that somebody used your kindness against you and the next time you see a genuine fundraising appeal, you might scroll past it...
That, to me, is one of the biggest problems with online crowdfunding... Fraud doesn't just steal money. It can also destroy the trust that makes people willing to help one another.
Crowdfunding itself is not a bad idea.. In fact, I think it is one of the most useful things the internet has made possible... Before social media became such a powerful tool, someone who needed money for an emergency might have depended entirely on relatives, neighbours, church members, colleagues, or friends and even then, there was no guarantee that the money would come...
Today, someone in Abuja can share a fundraising appeal and receive contributions from people in Lagos, Port Harcourt, London, Canada, or somewhere else entirely.. A business owner can raise money to expand a small business. A student can seek help with school fees. A family can appeal for support when medical expenses become overwhelming.. People who might never meet physically can come together to solve a problem... That is beautiful and in Nigeria, where unexpected expenses can put serious pressure on families, having another way to seek financial assistance can be valuable but the same internet that connects people who want to help also connects them to people who want to take advantage of that willingness.
Someone can copy another person's hospital pictures, invent a sad story, create a fresh social media account, and begin collecting donations..
Another person might raise money for a genuine cause but exaggerate the amount required...
Someone else might collect donations for a project and then use part of the money for something completely different without telling the contributors.
These situations are not all identical, but they raise the same question: How do we know that the money we are sending is actually going where we believe it is going?.. because honestly, a touching story is not proof.. A photograph is not proof and the fact that somebody has thousands of followers does not automatically make them trustworthy.
Can We Trust Online Donation Platforms?
My answer is that trust should depend on how a platform operates, not simply on how professional its website looks...
I wouldn't automatically trust every crowdfunding platform, but I also wouldn't reject all of them because some people use them to commit fraud...
That would mean allowing dishonest people to ruin something that could genuinely help others... Instead, I would want to know what checks the platform carries out before approving a campaign.
Does it verify the identity of the person raising the money?..
Can it confirm the identity of the beneficiary?.. For medical fundraising, does it have a process for checking hospital bills or contacting the relevant institution, with the patient's permission?
Does it explain what happens if a campaign turns out to be fraudulent?.. and if the campaign raises more money than expected, what happens to the excess?
These are not unreasonable questions. They are the kind of questions people should be able to ask before trusting a platform with their money.
I also think we need to separate the platform from the person creating the campaign.... A platform may provide the space where people raise funds without independently verifying every detail of every story. That means its users should understand what has actually been checked instead of assuming that every campaign has received the same level of verification.
Transparency should not be something a platform talks about only when people begin asking questions.... It should be part of how the platform works.
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