Inflation and the rising cost of living have taken such a toll on the population over the past three years that, according to the platform GoFundMe, more than 200,000 Canadians have started a crowdfunding campaign to cover their daily expenses.
So we see that the number of Canadian campaigns mentioning “cost of living” on the platform has seen a meteoric rise since 2020 (274%).
In most cases, the money collected would go toward paying for groceries and the house. Specifically, we saw 140,000 campaigns to fund housing and 56,000 to fund food, said Ved Khan, senior director of corporate affairs at GoFundMe in Canada, according to The National Post.
In total, the approximately 214,912 campaigns between 2020 and 2024 brought in more than $480 million.
Crowdfunding: Help for food banks
Although food banks use all possible means to collect donations – be it money or non-perishable food – they also use GoFundMe.
“It is a very good tool for (us) to independently create campaigns so that members of our community can organize events and various initiatives for the food bank,” Kitty Raman Costa, the bank's executive director, told English-language media. They then create a GoFundMe link and share it with participants, their family members, or members of their own community to support the food bank.