Unmet financial needs among patients crowdfunding to support gynecologic cancer care

Background: Patients may use crowdfunding to solicit donations, typically from multiple small donors using internet-based means, to offset the financial toxicity of cancer care.

Objective: To describe crowdfunding campaigns by gynecologic cancer patients and to compare campaign characteristics and needs expressed between patients with cervical, uterine, and ovarian cancer.

Study design: We queried the public crowdfunding forum GoFundMe.com for "cervical cancer," "uterine cancer," and "ovarian cancer." The first 200 consecutive posts for each cancer type fundraising within the United States were analyzed. Data on campaign goals and needs expressed were manually extracted. Descriptive statistics and bivariate analyses were performed.

Results: Among the 600 fundraising pages, the median campaign goal was $10,000 [IQR $5000-$23,000]. Campaigns raised a median of 28.6% of their goal with only 8.7% of campaigns reaching their goal after a median of 54 days online. On average, ovarian cancer campaigns had higher monetary goals, more donors, and larger donation amounts than cervical cancer campaigns and raised more money than both cervical and uterine cancer campaigns. Campaigns were fundraising to support medical costs (80-85%) followed by lost wages (36-56%) or living expenses (27-41%). Cervical cancer campaigns reported need for non-medical costs more frequently than uterine or ovarian cancer campaigns. States without Medicaid expansions (31% of the national population) were over-represented among cervical cancer and uterine cancer, but not ovarian cancer campaigns.

Conclusions: Crowdfunding pages reveal patients fundraising for out-of-pocket costs in the thousands of dollars and a wide range of unmet financial needs based on cancer type.