Crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe usually offer hope and support to people in their most desperate times of need, but here’s a case where creating a fundraiser only made the entire situation more heartbreaking: This man’s fundraiser for his son’s leukemia treatment was put on GoFundMe’s main homepage as an example of what not to do when making a GoFundMe. 

Oof. That’s not what you want at all. 

When loving father Cliff Masterson created a GoFundMe to help support his son’s leukemia treatment, it was a difficult decision. He felt ashamed to be publicly asking for help, but months of stress and sleepless nights meant he wasn’t able to put much focus into his carpentry business, and as a single parent his finances were running thin. He threw together a post explaining the situation and set a goal of $10,000 to help cover his son’s expensive treatment and went to bed. But when he checked the page in the morning to see if there were any donations, his heartbreaking situation went from bad to worse when he saw his post on GoFundMe’s front page, not as GoFundMe of the day, but under the heading, “What Not To Do When Making A GoFundMe.”

The article included criticisms of Cliff’s fundraiser from top to bottom, with nearly every aspect of the post critiqued in red pen like a heavily corrected high school English paper. The original title of the GoFundMe, “Helpo my Son Beat CANCER” was crossed out entirely, with the note, “Typos, unnecessary capitalization, generic wording, not urgent enough. Choose titles that capture the imagination and make donors feel important, such as, ‘Angels needed to make sure my little slugger can one day play in the big leagues,’ or ‘C’mon, heroes, let’s prove the doctors wrong.’” Cliff’s original paragraph text, which read simply, “My kid is getting treated for leukemia, anything helps,” was also crossed out, with the note, “We at GoFundMe always say, if they aint cryin’, they aint buyin’. This is your chance to really tug at your donors’ heartstrings, and the writing here is about as engaging as an IKEA instruction manual.” Even the photo of his son he used had notes tagged onto it, stating, “Kid should look sicker. Nose tubes/hospital bed/bruises, etc. GoFundMe’s research shows that posts where the kid looks really sick perform 128% better on average than posts where the kid looks fine.” 

Oof. This is not something the parent of a child with cancer wants to deal with. 

As unfortunate as it is for Cliff that his post is being highlighted in such a negative light by GoFundMe, it does appear that their critiques of his post are spot on, as his GoFundMe is so far only up to $75. Whether Cliff is able to take GoFundMe’s suggestions to heart and fix up his post or he’s simply too devastated about the entire son’s cancer/GoFundMe thing to log into his GoFundMe portal ever again remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure, and that’s that this is about as heartbreaking as it gets.