Crowdfunding - a rising trend in fundraising?

Posted by irishg on May 16th, 2009 at 05:34pm

Interesting excerpt from The Crowdfunding Wiki:

Crowdfunding, inspired by crowdsourcing,
describes the collective cooperation, attention and trust by people who
network and pool their money together, usually via the Internet, in
order to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations. Crowdfunding
occurs for any variety of purposes, from disaster relief to citizen
journalism to artists seeking support from fans, to political campaigns.

Crowdfunding can replace the need for specialized
grant applications or other more formal and traditional fundraising
techniques with that of a more casual, yet powerful, approach based on
crowd participation. Examples of the basis of Crowdfunding can be seen in Cooperatives
(co-ops) around the world. However, the Internet can provide new
streamlined approaches to quickly imitating the co-op model for
low-level and/or sudden needs (ie. disaster relief, travel expenses,
legal fees and so on.). It is this reason that a term be used to
encompass the act of informally generating and distributing funds,
usually online, by groups of people for specific social, personal,
entertainment or other purposes.

> Visit the Crowdfunding wiki

> ARTICLE: Crowdfunding – a Web 2.0 twist on what community fundraisers have always done?

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