The great American coronavirus giveaway

As coronavirus pushes millions into poverty, many are struggling to feed their families, writes Holly Baxter. Enter the Twitter philanthropists – handing out money to those who plead their cases in 280 characters

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I just found out I am ineligible for unemployment benefits. I am starting to lose hope, but I am patient. My fridge is near empty. I am two months behind rent and have past due bills with a disabled mom. Please Fred this would mean a lot.”

“I’m a mommy to 5 kids and I was currently laid off due to Covid19, I also lost my home and now stay in a hotel, here’s my CashApp handle.”

“Hoping you can help my mother and I get groceries for this week to get us enough to eat. Anything would help us so much. Thank you for helping so many.”

“Please Fred help. I am a real estate broker and I haven't had any business with this Covid-19. I have a disabled adult son that I care for as well as my elderly mother. Anything you can do will be greatly appreciated.”

“Hi Fred I'm really struggling at the moment and lost my job last week. Need to buy food, groceries to feed my family. I don't know what to do. I'm hoping and praying you see this. Anything is much appreciated if you can help.”

“Hoping you see this single mom who was laid off because of Covid need help with groceries and bills to help fix my son's wheelchair any amount would be appreciated. Please help me!!!”

“BEEN PATIENTLY WRITING IN BIG LETTERS TIL YOU SEE ME. I JUST PRAY TODAY IS THE DAY.”

These are just a few tweets which were directed at Frederick T Joseph in a single day. But Joseph is not a millionaire – even if he was featured in last year’s Forbes 30 Under 30 list of promising young marketers. A self-professed “politics nerd” and former national surrogate for the Elizabeth Warren campaign, Joseph has a book coming out in 2021 called The Black Friend and, prior to the coronavirus pandemic, spent a lot of his time writing about the intersection of race and young politics for various publications (including, in the past, The Independent).

But then Covid-19 came to America, and Joseph pivoted. The pandemic “has created one of the most difficult moments in world history, a moment we will surely look back on,” he wrote on 26 March. “When we do, I want future generations to know we came together as people. To feel proud that we supported each other.” That was the day he launched his “Coronavirus Rent Relief Fund” on GoFundMe, a fundraiser has so far made over $311,000. That money went into Joseph’s bank account, from where he now gives out $200 at a time via CashApp, Zelle or Venmo to needy people who come begging to him on Twitter.

“This goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: I won’t keep a dime,” Joseph wrote on GoFundMe while requesting donations. “Every dollar that comes into this GoFundMe will go to people who need help.” And it’s clear that people believe in his method: the donations are rolling in to this day, in sizeable amounts, with $50 or even $100 not uncommon. Someone called Nancy DelPresto donated $400. A user who wished to remain anonymous donated $200. And GoFundMe itself confirmed to me that they donated $10,000 to Joseph’s campaign at the outset, as well as promoting other, similar Rent Relief fundraisers which were inspired by him.

It’s safe to say that Joseph has been inundated with requests since he started this innovative wealth distribution fund – and a quick scroll through his Twitter feed begins to feel somewhat Dickensian after a few short minutes. “God bless you Fred, I’m always waiting my turn for help,” said one user called Ahmad Jumarsono on 28 April. “Glad to say it’s your turn. Hope it helps,” replied Joseph, with a screenshot of himself transferring $200 into Jumarsono’s bank account.

Digital activism is in Frederick Joseph’s wheelhouse. When he signed with Candlewick Press to publish The Black Friend, Candlewick put out a statement which proudly mentioned Joseph’s #CaptainMarvelChallenge and #BlackPantherChallenge, two funds which raised money over social media for poor children to see the two Marvel films in cinemas. A Twitter joke about writing a book called “How to be a Decent White Person: A Collection of Thoughts from Non-White People”, which garnered 27,000 likes from fans, led him to the book deal. Now he is a rich benefactor on the internet, with tens of sad stories a minute delivered to his digital door every day from across the world. One can’t help but think it must take its emotional toll.

I hear from my followers they're so much happier since following me. I even had someone saying they were thinking of killing themselves but then they didn’t after following me

Joseph told me that emotional toll can be difficult: “There was one specific young woman who i helped on Instagram yesterday — we did a live session — and she was in her car with her two daughters and her car had broken down a few minutes prior, and she was about to spend her last $134 on a tow truck and then she didn't know where she was going to sleep that night with her children or what they were going to eat. So we actually gave her the $200 we’ve been giving out and I gave her $400 from my own account to help her out. And it’s moments like that that take their toll on the soul.” Joseph was clear that he would not have to give if not for the failings of others, adding: “It hurts even more how little our government has done for our citizens and the positions people are in that they don't have to be in.”

Why not give to an established charity? Surely they are better placed to find the most needy and distribute aid to them rather than one man on the internet? “Many things can be true at the same time,” Joseph responded. “But this is one aspect of philanthropy that should be getting more play. More people should be focused on direct relief as opposed to deep systems… The people who we’ve helped, I am sure almost 100 per cent have reached out to non-profits and are waiting for a stimulus cheque, so combined efforts are going to help people. This is a good stop-gap and it’s something people should invest in trying to scale.” He added that he had worked in the non-profit sector in the past and that people inevitably fall through the cracks when a large organisation is involved: we need “more bureaucracy, less red tape,” he said. “People need help as direct as possible, which is why the government gave people a stimulus cheque – even though it wasn’t enough.”

As long as this person is real, then if they make up their story about needing $200 it says more about the situation we’re in than anything

The US has long been the country of the generous benefactor and the small community dealing with its own issues; even Democrat-minded Americans tend to agree that “big government” is a bad thing. Though working-class Trump voters may be struggling economically during the coronavirus pandemic, few have directed their ire at a government which offered a single $1,200 cheque to each American taxpayer before leaving them to flounder. The “coastal elite” Democrats I spoke to for this article – in other words, everyday citizens living in New York and California – told me that they had been watching European countries with a sad envy; nationally funded furlough programmes like that of the UK, which pays 80 per cent of the usual salaries of employees on the scheme, are little more than a utopian dream to Americans. “More bureaucracy, less red tape” is baked into US culture so strongly that it is taken to be an inalienable truth, and means that direct giving rather than a social safety net is preferred by Americans of all political stripes, even if it does create a strange power dynamic between the giver and the receiver. That’s why Joseph — a left-leaning, self-made black writer in his twenties in New York who supports cancelling student debt and advocates for racial justice – has a lot in common right now with Bill Pulte, a 31-year-old, white, Michigan-based grandson of a billionaire real-estate mogul.

Pulte, who was personally thanked by Donald Trump on Twitter for his $30,000 donation to a military veteran in July last year, is another philanthropist doing big giveaways on Twitter during the coronavirus pandemic, but he doesn’t need to rely on donations to a fundraiser: everything he gives away comes out of his own pocket. When I spoke to him about his ongoing “Bailout Humans” initiative, he was energetic and optimistic, and keen to impress upon me how what he was doing was “the future”.

“My demand has gone up 20-fold,” he told me, when I asked how he’d been affected by the Covid-19 crisis (he was doing social media philanthropy before coronavirus hit the US, including an impressive drive for food banks, and has encouraged other millionaires across the world to do similar giveaways under the “Team Pulte” banner). “Sometimes I need to take a break. But overall it’s good for my mental health to be involved in something selfless. It’s been transformative for my own life.”

How have people reacted to his giveaways, I asked Pulte – did anyone have a reaction that surprised him? “Some of my friends thought I was crazy,” he said, “and there were some nasty blogs that thought I was a fake.” But he’d only be doing this if he really believed in it, he added. “After all, I’ve lost a lot of money.” How much? “I’m not sure the exact amount but over $400,000. Plus cars and other goods. I gave away two Teslas, did you see that? And a Chevrolet. Those were cars for veterans.”

It’s not just Pulte who has reaped the emotional benefits of his philanthropy, he told me: “I hear from my followers they're so much happier since following me. I even had someone saying they were thinking of killing themselves but then they didn’t after following me.”

Pulte wants to transform charitable giving; he referred to the way in which he directly transfers small amounts of money to people as “new charity,” and said he envisioned it changing the philanthropic space in the way Bitcoin transformed currency. He spoke passionately about technology and its ability to benefit humanity if harnessed correctly; in that way, he sounded very like former presidential candidate Andrew Yang. When I asked him if he felt more connected to the lives of working-class people now he communicates with them every day, he said he’d certainly been able to get a glimpse of “the front lines of coronavirus”, because he’d been conversing with people online who had Covid-19 diagnoses “before people really knew how bad this was”. “Remdesivir I thought would become the main drug,” he added, before asking me if I’d seen a new study that showed it had promising results in a large-scale trial. “Gilead [the pharmaceutical company which developed remdesivir] had good results and the stock market shot up this morning.” Pulte even sent me the story of a physician assistant named James Cai who he “helped get the drug in its early stages” – Cai has since recovered from Covid-19.

When I asked whether he saw himself continuing with his Twitter philanthropy beyond the coronavirus pandemic, Pulte was firm: nothing could stop him. “In fact,” he said, “today I’m starting a new thing. I’m giving $100 to people in need, plus $100 to buy gold with.” So each person will get $200 in total, I asked? “Yes, that’s correct. So long as they buy gold. And that’s what governments should be doing.” Sure enough, a few hours after our phone call I saw him giving money out for gold on his Twitter timeline; those who had benefited were popping up everywhere with the digital receipts showing they had indeed invested in the precious metal. “Would you buy gold if I gave you the money?” he asked in a Twitter poll before announcing his new initiative, and – surprise, surprise – 95 per cent of respondents said yes. “Who are the 5 per cent who said no? Lol,” Pulte tweeted in response to the results, with a laughing emoji.

Why not just donate some of your wealth to charity, I asked Pulte? Like Joseph, he responded that charities have “a lot of overheads” and he preferred to be direct. “Now everyone’s doing it,” he added. “Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lopez, Ellen DeGeneres are all giving away money online. I partnered with Jeffree Star to do some more – I don’t know if you know him? The make-up guy? – he’s a good friend of mine. And I’m doing a giveaway with MrBeast, I think he’s the number one YouTuber in the world.” Philanthropy does come with some extra benefits beyond the warm fuzzy feeling, then.

There was one other question I was keen to pose to both Joseph and Pulte: how could they verify that the claims people were making on Twitter were true – the stories of abject poverty, the heartrending stories about being unable to buy presents for their children’s birthdays or stump up the rent for an unsympathetic landlord. Did it matter if they weren’t? “That’s a good question,” Pulte laughed. “Oh, I like that. No reporter has ever asked me that. Well, if 90 per cent are accurate and 10 per cent are scams, I’ll take those odds.”

“We do a lot of vetting,” said Joseph. “Googling and so on. But the reality of it is this: as long as this person is real, then if they make up their story about needing $200 it says more about the situation we’re in than anything. I’m pretty sure that out of the 1,300 people we’ve helped, not everyone was being 100 per cent forthcoming, but I don’t really care … If you have two kids that are hungry as opposed to five you made up, that doesn't change the fact you need help.”

Back on Twitter, Pulte was busy sending money to a tweeter who attached a picture of an ultrasound to her plea: “Im 32 weeks pregnant and have no job, no one hires me mostly because I’m pregnant and because of the pandemic.I just paid rent out of money I had saved for my baby’s essentials. Times are rough.” A few minutes later and clearly on a roll, Pulte announced a “random winner” for that week of $5,000. “I was the random winner, it is real and I cannot believe it, I am still crying happy tears, thank you Pulte and team, I’m so grateful,” tweeted a woman calling herself Kayla. Pulte attached a screenshot of his PayPal account so “the haters” couldn’t say it was fake.

A few minutes later, he tweeted: “I could be doing a lot of other things with $5,000 (you can imagine what) but I chose to give it away on Twitter.” That got 8,500 retweets and 66,800 likes.