After effecting serious change in the world of music streaming, noted tech influencer Taylor Swift has moved on to the crowdfunding sphere. GoFundMe announced yesterday that its donation limit was being raised from $15,000 to $50,000, and credited the change to Swift's generosity. She donated the latter amount — presumably in three chunks of $15,000 and a $5,000 kicker — to the Naomi's Fight Against Cancer campaign, which is dedicated to a young girl recently diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia.

This isn't Swift's first time using GoFundMe to help people in need. She donated $15,000 to a Texas firefighter who saved his own wife and son from a car crash last month. Swift has a long history of fan-oriented generosity, from sending fans Christmas care packages to inviting them to hear 1989 at her apartment before its release. (Who can forget the time she met a fan in Central Park and gave her $90 when she mentioned she was going to Chipotle?) But these recent donations seem to fall into the category of straightforward altruism: there aren't any specific references to Taylor Swift fandom in either of the campaigns that have received her generosity.

Because she's Taylor Swift, her donations have a ripple effect

It seems like she's just flipping through GoFundMe's various drives and donating massive sums to the ones that connect with her in some way, behavior I'm loathe to stain with any cynicism. And because she's Taylor Swift, any donation she makes leads to a ripple effect: the affected campaigns get an additional wave of publicity on sites like ours, leading to even more visibility and money.

From GoFundMe's perspective, the donation limit lift is only going to affect a very rich, very small slice of users, but it makes sense as a change to which Swift's continued use of the service can be pegged. And in a year when people have been trying to use GoFundMe as a means to some unsavory, morally questionable ends, making sure people know the biggest musician in the world uses the service to change people's lives is an absolute no-brainer.