CHE Seminar Series: Charitable Giving for Health - Who benefits from Aotearoa New Zealand's Givealittle crowdfunding platform?
Crowdfunding for health has become an increasingly popular way to finance healthcare. Exploiting new methods of collating publicly available data and text mining, this paper seeks to understand crowdfunding of health in a country with universal health coverage but a system with growing inequities over time.
Web scraping was used to collect data from health-related crowdfunding campaigns from Givealittle, Aotearoa New Zealand’s most prominent crowdfunding platform.
Natural language processing (NLP) and large language models (LLM) extracted information from the narrative/pitch/description of Givealittle campaigns to understand the nature of illness or condition, the demographics of the individual, the reason for the request and the location.
Numerical information on the goal, amount raised, number of donors and days active were also extracted. We employ a generalised linear model to understand the predictors of success.
Analyses find that the demographics of the recipient determine the amount raised by a campaign and whether the goal is reach. This potentially exacerbates inequities. The nature of the illness is also a strong predictor of campaign success.
This paper offers an alternative picture of New Zealand’s unmet health needs, and provides an example of the application of machine learning techniques to health economic issues.
Speaker profile
Professor Paula Lorgelly is a Professor of Health Economics at the University of Auckland. This is joint post across the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences and the School of Business. Prof Lorgelly has held academic positions in the UK and Australia and worked in the independent sector in the UK. Paula's research interests span three defined areas in health economics: the determinants of health, healthcare and health expenditure; economic evaluation; and outcome measurement. Prof Lorgelly is a member of the EuroQol Group, an Associate Editor for Health Economics and on the Editorial Boards of The Patient and the Social Science Medicine – Health Systems.
Weekly seminar series
As part of our Centre's vibrant research culture, we host a weekly seminar series. Visiting and invited researchers present current research relating to the economics of health and wellbeing, and the healthcare sector. Visitors are welcome to join these sessions where discussion and debate is encouraged.
For further information on our seminar series, please contact Trong-Anh.Trinh@monash.edu
Event Details
- Date:
- 29 October 2025 at 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
- Venue:
- Caulfield campus, Building H, level 9, room H9.14
- Categories:
- CHE Seminar; General
Description
Crowdfunding for health has become an increasingly popular way to finance healthcare. Exploiting new methods of collating publicly available data and text mining, this paper seeks to understand crowdfunding of health in a country with universal health coverage but a system with growing inequities over time.
Web scraping was used to collect data from health-related crowdfunding campaigns from Givealittle, Aotearoa New Zealand’s most prominent crowdfunding platform.
Natural language processing (NLP) and large language models (LLM) extracted information from the narrative/pitch/description of Givealittle campaigns to understand the nature of illness or condition, the demographics of the individual, the reason for the request and the location.
Numerical information on the goal, amount raised, number of donors and days active were also extracted. We employ a generalised linear model to understand the predictors of success.
Analyses find that the demographics of the recipient determine the amount raised by a campaign and whether the goal is reach. This potentially exacerbates inequities. The nature of the illness is also a strong predictor of campaign success.
This paper offers an alternative picture of New Zealand’s unmet health needs, and provides an example of the application of machine learning techniques to health economic issues.
Speaker profile
Professor Paula Lorgelly is a Professor of Health Economics at the University of Auckland. This is joint post across the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences and the School of Business. Prof Lorgelly has held academic positions in the UK and Australia and worked in the independent sector in the UK. Paula's research interests span three defined areas in health economics: the determinants of health, healthcare and health expenditure; economic evaluation; and outcome measurement. Prof Lorgelly is a member of the EuroQol Group, an Associate Editor for Health Economics and on the Editorial Boards of The Patient and the Social Science Medicine – Health Systems.
Weekly seminar series
As part of our Centre's vibrant research culture, we host a weekly seminar series. Visiting and invited researchers present current research relating to the economics of health and wellbeing, and the healthcare sector. Visitors are welcome to join these sessions where discussion and debate is encouraged.
For further information on our seminar series, please contact Trong-Anh.Trinh@monash.edu