Nora Kenworthy, "Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare" (MIT Press, 2024)

Oct 30, 2025

Nora Kenworthy, a Professor at the University of Washington, delves into the complexities of medical crowdfunding in her research. She discusses how neoliberalism and racism influence who gets funded on platforms like GoFundMe, revealing disturbing inequalities. Kenworthy highlights the pressures individuals face to craft 'deserving' narratives, which often distort real needs. She also examines the emotional strains of crowdfunding campaigns and their societal implications, advocating for mutual aid as a way to reshape our understanding of healthcare support.

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INSIGHT

Crowdfunding Reinforces Structural Inequities

Crowdfunding amplifies and deepens existing social and health inequities rather than solving them.
It repackages systemic problems into marketable individual narratives that favor some groups over others.

INSIGHT

Platforms Mirror Neoliberal Health Logics

Crowdfunding's logic mirrors neoliberal and racialized logics already embedded in U.S. healthcare.
It encourages individualist, market-based choices about who is deemed worthy of help.

ANECDOTE

Trevor’s Campaign Failed From Shame

Trevor, a single dad with diabetes, felt he wasn't "deserving enough" and barely shared his campaign.
He posted anonymously online and unsurprisingly raised no donations.

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In Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare (MIT Press, 2024), Dr. Nora Kenworthy presents an eye-opening investigation into charitable crowdfunding for healthcare in the United States—and the consequences of allowing healthcare access to be decided by the digital crowd.

Over the past decade, charitable crowdfunding has exploded in popularity across the globe. Sites such as GoFundMe, which now boasts a “global community of over 100 million” users, have transformed the ways we seek and offer help. When faced with crises—especially medical ones—Americans are turning to online platforms that promise to connect them to the charity of the crowd. What does this new phenomenon reveal about the changing ways we seek and provide healthcare? In Crowded Out, Dr. Kenworthy examines how charitable crowdfunding so quickly overtook public life, where it is taking us, and who gets left behind by this new platformed economy.
Although crowdfunding has become ubiquitous in our lives, it is often misunderstood: rather than a friendly free market “powered by the kindness” of strangers, crowdfunding is powerfully reinforcing inequalities and changing the way Americans think about and access healthcare. Drawing on extensive research and rich storytelling, Crowded Out demonstrates how crowdfunding for health is fueled by—and further reinforces—financial and moral “toxicities” in market-based healthcare systems. It offers a unique and distressing look beneath the surface of some of the most popular charitable platforms and helps to foster thoughtful discussions of how we can better respond to healthcare crises both small and large.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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