The race has begun. December is here and we are being bombarded with messages about charitable initiatives and calls for support. According to Forbes, many charities say they receive more than half of their total contributions for the year between the months of October and December. But charity is not only about giving or donating; it is also about sharing information. Those of us who are active on social media have probably, at some stage, shared a post about a missing child, the urgent need for a specific blood type donor, or even stray dogs who are in need of a new home. We believe we do good in sharing – but is that always the case?
Recently there was a story in the USabout a seemingly charitable couple who took to social media to post the touching story of how homeless veteran Johnny Bobbitt had spent his last USD 20 to help Kate McClure when she ran out of gas. They launched a GoFundMe campaign in order to “pay it forward” and raised a whopping USD 400,000. But Bobbitt and McClure were not strangers. They did not meet for the first time at the gas station – but had merely taken a picture there together in order to get potential donors’ sympathy. The scam had been carefully planned for weeks – and was unveiled only after Johnny Bobbitt sued McClure and her husband for not sharing the donations with him as promised. Instead, they spent it on gambling, expensive holidays, luxury handbags and a new BMW. The three people involved all risk up to 10 years in prison. However, there is at least some good news for the 14,000 donors who contributed to the campaign: they will all get reimbursed by GoFundMe.
But not everyone is that lucky, and this is just one of many examples of people using a social media-driven campaign for their own nefarious gain.
There is a number of checks which Beijingers can carry out before sharing or giving – rather than simply perpetuating the torrent of spam that can be disguised as goodwill.
Fake or genuine? Checking for authenticity
In 2017, The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) told The Independent that sharing pictures of missing children on social media can do more harm than good. The child in the pictures might not be lost – but rather hiding for his/her own safety – or the picture may be posted by a parent who is in dispute with the child’s other parent. This was the case last year when a Chinese father from Hangzhou reported his child missing on social media, while the child was, in fact, with his American mother the whole time.
The police also advise citizens to verify the picture circulated in missing people’s ads: “If the image did not originate from a confirmed police source or from a reputable media outlet showing that officers are actively searching, the post is ‘likely not legitimate.’”
Is it really charity?
You have probably come across posts like this one in your social media feed:
A critical article posted on the media platform Adweek lined out the three tools used in this type of campaign:
a. a positive message
b. an aggressive call to action
c. an emotionally manipulative stock photograph
The term “slacktivism” is used to describe the types of campaigns where people are made to feel that they are making a difference merely by clicking “like”.
Judging by the comments this particular post got, it was clear that readers were not impressed. In fact, they saw this mostly as “shameless self-promotion disguised as charity”. Conditions and terms are usually a big red flag and in the case of the Papa John’s post, the conditions led to a number of questions. What happens if the post does not get 50,000 likes? Will Papa John then not donate USD 50,000 to The Salvation Army? Could the company not have donated the USD 50,000 themselves, then posted a picture and spread awareness that way? Could it simply have highlighted stories of children helped by The Salvation Army?
No such thing as too much information
In the case of the boy from Hangzhou reported missing by his father, some people were sharing the call for help as they, understandably, identified with the horror of losing a child. But there was an equal number of parents questioning what exactly was going on. Despite having spread like wildfire on WeChat, the ad lacked details and vital pieces of information such as the fact that the boy’s parents were separated and the child was with his mother. The lack of details in this call for help made it unclear whether or not the father was acting in good faith when he reported his son missing.
When it comes to the best practices of sharing as much information as possible, we turn to the UK where the NHS (National Health Service) has been praised for its social media campaigns for blood donations. In 2015 they managed to triple blood donor registrations, and part of their success was due to a particularly informative social media campaign. The NHS successfully managed to create a number of educational, witty, and positive threads about blood types, and they were able to anticipate their followers’ questions rather than launch a campaign and wait for an avalanche of questions and negative comments.
As social media users, we should expect nothing less than very informative posts before we rush into sharing initiatives such as calls for blood donations.
Transparency
Most social media users have come across calls for donations to cancer charities. There are hundreds of charities with “cancer” in their names, but do we know what they do and how they spend these donations? Transparency is key when we look into which organizations to support, and we should always be able to find clear information in their social media posts and on their websites. In the case of cancer charities, it should be clear whether the organization is doing research, whether it provides services to those suffering from cancer, or if they share information to help us live healthier lives. But, just as importantly, financial reports should always be publicly available. As Ben Summerskill wrote in a 2015 article for The Guardian, “Transparency should be a charity’s priority, not a reluctant requirement.”
Best practice – supporting one charity a month via a WeChat split bill
In China, WeChat tends to be the platform of choice for sharing and caring – and one particular Shanghai-based group is getting it just right.
When Sabrina (who wishes to remain anonymous) moved to China, she started doing various types of volunteer work. When a friend one day approached her to say that she had some extra income that she would like to donate to a charity but didn’t know how to find the right cause, Sabrina started to look up suitable charities online. It turned out to be a time-consuming task that often leads to dead ends with little information available, or charities that were not “China equipped” and only accepted payments by foreign credit cards. Sabrina came up with the idea of creating a WeChat group where members make a monthly contribution via the split bill function in WeChat, and collectively decide which charity to support that month.
Here is how it works:
All group members commit to an RMB 100 donation per month. Sabrina then provides a list of three selected charities and members of the group decide by online voting which causes they would like to support. Voting is not mandatory, so members are free to leave the decision up to the other members of the group.
The basic requirements for eligible charities are that they must be reputable and trustworthy – and for logistical reasons, they must accept donations via WeChat or Alipay.
Around the second week of the month, the results of the vote are announced and a split bill is sent to members who have one week to make their contribution of RMB 100. At the end of the month, the money is donated and members receive proof of payment in the group chat.
“This was such a simple idea to come up with and virtually anyone could start a similar group,” says Sabrina. “It’s a China-friendly and relatively easy group to manage – even for people like me who have full-time jobs. I hope that other people follow suit and that this model will be used more and more, in order to allow us to support worthy causes through something as simple and brilliant as WeChat.”
Methods of giving to charity and sharing good initiatives have evolved rapidly in recent years. Whether it be Ice Bucket Challenges or simple online payments, this convenience also means that we need to be vigilant and make sure not to perpetuate the actions of some who wish to take advantage of the good-natured people hoping to make a difference.
This article first appeared in the beijingkids December 2018 Charity and Goodwill issue.
Photo: Adobe Creative Suite; screenshots from GoFundMe.com, Facebook, and Twitter