Serious-Illness Crowdfunding Relies on Personal Circles; Serious-Illness Mutual Aid Transcends Personal Connections

Crowdfunding and mutual aid are both expressions of people watching out for and helping one another. But there is an important difference: crowdfunding relies more on an individual's social relationships, while mutual aid relies on shared rules established in advance by everyone.

iResearch's 2024 User Survey Report on Online Crowdfunding for Serious Illness shows that donations from acquaintances account for an average of about 47.6%, the proportion of campaigns that raise the full amount is only 9.3%, and the average completion rate of a single fundraising target is about 17.2%.

These figures show that although crowdfunding is warm-hearted, its actual fundraising capacity is often limited, and it is easily affected by an individual's social resources.

For people facing the same serious illness, some have many friends and broad connections, so their requests for help can spread quickly; others are ordinary workers, farmers, or retired elderly people with narrow social circles, and even if their illness is equally severe, the help they receive may differ greatly.

A person's social relationships should not determine his or her chance of receiving help in the face of illness.

This is an important reason why KangAi Commune insists on the mutual aid model.

Mutual aid also stems from goodwill, but it strives to turn temporary goodwill into shared rules that are agreed in advance and followed over the long term.

At KangAi Commune, whether someone can receive help does not depend on how many people they know or whether they have influence, but on whether they meet the open and transparent rules of mutual aid. Regardless of the size of their social circle, eligible members can apply for help under the same rules.

The most important fair value of mutual aid is that it strives to ensure differences in social relationships no longer become differences in the chance to receive help.

Of course, mutual aid is not insurance and cannot promise absolutely stable payouts. Whether it can last over the long term depends on members' joint participation, reasonable cost-sharing, and mutual trust. This also requires KangAi Commune to always uphold openness, transparency, and fair review, so that rules are more reliable than personal favors.

The warmth of crowdfunding lies in the fact that when hardship strikes, someone is willing to lend a hand; the value of mutual aid lies in the fact that before hardship strikes, everyone has already agreed to watch out for one another.

The two do not conflict; they complement each other.

For ordinary people, what is truly worth pursuing is not how many people can be moved after they fall ill, but that even if few people know them, they will not be left isolated and helpless in the face of illness.

Making help depend less on personal connections and more on fair rules—this is precisely the important significance of KangAi Commune's insistence on mutual aid.