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• Posted November 14, 2025

Cancer Care Crowdfunding Increasingly Common, But Rarely Successful

A growing number of desperate cancer survivors are turning to crowdfunding to help pay for their treatment and living expenses, a new study says.

However, only 1 in 9 campaigns reached their fundraising goals, calling into question how much help they really provided, researchers reported in the November issue of the Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.

“The use of crowdfunding is growing and shortages between financial assistance requested and received are substantial, underscoring unmet financial needs among cancer survivors in the U.S.,” lead researcher Jason Zheng, senior principal scientist of health services research at the American Cancer Society, said in a news release.

“However, it is important to note that only a small fraction of the more than 18 million cancer survivors in the U.S. initiated crowdfunding for financial help,” Zheng added.

For the study, researchers used an AI to review more than 78,000 fundraiser stories related to cancer between January 2021 and February 2023 on GoFundMe, and collected 90-day donation records for each.

Among nearly 4.5 million donation records, a total $506 million was raised, researchers found.

However, that accounted for under 35% of the total financial assistance requested, the study said. Campaign goals added up to nearly $1.5 billion.

The median fundraising goal was $10,000, and the median amount of money received was $4,000. (Median means half sought and received more money, half sought and received less.) 

Less than 12% of campaigns reached their goal within 90 days.

“Although cancer-related GoFundMe campaigns raised millions of dollars, it is less than 5% of estimated patient out-of-pocket costs annually,” Zheng said. “Utilizing the private market may help some patients, but public health policies are needed to make health care affordable for all patients with cancer.” 

Cancers that received the greatest financial assistance through crowdfunding included pancreatic, blood and brain cancers, not the most commonly diagnosed malignancies, but among the most expensive to treat, researchers noted.

“For individuals with a cancer history, out-of-pocket costs are expected to continue rising as treatment costs increase and health insurers increasingly shift costs to patients,” researchers wrote in their study. 

“Approximately 12% of cancer survivors in the United States live in poverty, and two-thirds of adult survivors and their family members with medical debt have reduced spending on food, clothing or other living necessities,” the study continued.

“The widespread use of crowdfunding for medical care and basic needs, along with the high prevalence of unmet fundraising goals, underscores the financial precarity of cancer survivors and the fragility of safety nets in the United States,” researchers concluded.

More information

The National Cancer Institute has more on financial toxicity and cancer treatment.

SOURCES: American Cancer Society, news release, Nov. 10, 2025; Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, November 2025