The Success of Cancer Crowdfunding Campaigns: Project and Text Analysis

Background: Recent studies have analyzed the factors that contribute to variations in the success of crowdfunding campaigns for a specific cancer type; however, little is known about the influential factors among crowdfunding campaigns for multiple cancers. Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between project features and the success of cancer crowdfunding campaigns and to determine whether text features affect campaign success for various cancers. Methods: Using cancer-related crowdfunding projects on the GoFundMe website, we transformed textual descriptions from the campaigns into structured data using natural language processing techniques. Next, we used penalized logistic regression and correlation analyses to examine the influence of project and text features on fundraising project outcomes. Finally, we examined the influence of campaign description sentiment on crowdfunding success using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software. Results: Campaigns were significantly more likely to be successful if they featured a lower target amount (Goal amount, beta=-1.949, z score=-82.767, P<.001) for fundraising, a higher number of previous donations, agency (vs individual) organizers, project pages containing updates, and project pages containing comments from readers. The results revealed an inverted U-shaped relationship between the length of the text and the amount of funds raised. In addition, more spelling mistakes negatively affected the funds raised (Number of spelling errors, beta=-1.068, z score=-38.79, P<.001). Conclusions: Difficult-to-treat cancers and high-mortality cancers tend to trigger empathy from potential donors, which increases the funds raised. Gender differences were observed in the effects of emotional words in the text on the amount of funds raised. For cancers that typically occur in women, links between emotional words used and the amount of funds raised were weaker than for cancers typically occurring among men.