OBJECTIVES: Little is understood about the practices and success factors of online campaigns to crowdfund the costs of dementia care in the United States (U.S.) Using a non-traditional method of estimating the economic burden of dementia, this project aimed at identifying factors associated with successful, online, crowdfunded campaigns for patients with dementia.

METHODS: Data extraction from GoFundMe® was performed using Python programming language for campaigns that mentioned the word ‘dementia’ on September 12, 2021. After extraction, campaigns were assessed by four independent reviewers to determine if the campaign met the following inclusion criteria: campaign focused on patient or caregiver of patient with dementia, active campaign in the U.S. Data extracted included total donation received, donation goal, days campaign was active at time of data collection, patient pronoun, patient race/ethnicity, patient relationship to the campaign creator, dementia type, and category for use of funds. Data analysis was accomplished using SAS v9.4.

RESULTS: A total of 5,899 campaigns mentioned the word ‘dementia’ of which a convenience sample of 2,248 were assessed manually for inclusion. 789 campaigns were included for analysis. A variable named percentage goal was created to output the percentage values of donation received versus donation goals. The upper quartile(Q3) of this variable was 66.7%. Q3 was used to distinguish between High and Low donation category. Factors associated with successful crowdfunding at p<0.05 include longer post duration, higher donation amount received, higher donor count, higher share count, higher post update count, higher comment count, and patient being in a racial majority.

CONCLUSIONS: This study highlights the potential financial hardship associated with dementia care in the U.S. healthcare system. Individuals may turn to crowdfunding to ease financial burden for patients who have dementia and their caregivers. Successful campaigns share characteristics that can increase publicity and motivate donors to spend their money.