Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and of alternative finance. In 2015, it was estimated that worldwide over US$34 billion was raised this way.

Although the concept can also be executed through mail-order subscriptions, benefit events, and other methods, it is now often performed via Internet-mediated registries. This modern crowdfunding model is generally based on three types of actors: the project initiator who proposes the idea and/or project to be funded, individuals or groups who support the idea, and a moderating organization (the "platform") that brings the parties together to launch the idea.

Crowdfunding has been used to fund a wide range for-profit entrepreneurial ventures such as artistic and creative projects, medical expenses, travel, or community-oriented social entrepreneurship projects.

Crowdfunding has a long history with several roots. Books have been crowdfunded for centuries: Authors and publishers would advertise book projects in praenumeration or subscription schemes. The book would be written and published if enough subscribers signaled their readiness to buy the book once it was out. The subscription business model is not exactly crowdfunding, since the actual flow of money only begins with the arrival of the product. The list of subscribers has, though, the power to create the necessary confidence among investors that is needed to risk the publication.

War bonds are theoretically a form of crowdfunding military conflicts. London's mercantile community saved the Bank of England in the 1730s when customers demanded their pounds to be converted into gold - they supported the currency until confidence in the pound was restored, thus crowdfunded their own money. A clearer case of modern crowdfunding is Auguste Comte's scheme to issue notes for the public support of his further work as a philosopher. The "Premiere Circulaire Annuelle adressée par l’auteur du Systeme de Philosophie Positive" was published on 14 March 1850, and several of these notes, blank and with sums have survived. The cooperative movement of the 19th and 20th centuries is a broader precursor. It generated collective groups, such as community or interest-based groups, pooling subscribed funds to develop new concepts, products, and means of distribution and production, particularly in rural areas of Western Europe and North America. In 1885, when government sources failed to provide funding to build a monumental base for the Statue of Liberty, a newspaper-led campaign attracted small donations from 160,000 donors.

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