Civic crowdfunding

Abstract

Civic crowdfunding is a sub-type of crowdfunding whereby citizens contribute to funding community-based projects ranging from physical structures to amenities.Though civic crowdfunding has great potential for impact, it remains a developing field in terms of project success and widespread adoption. To explore how technology shapes interactions and outcomes within civic projects, our research addresses two interrelated questions: how do offline communities engage online across civic crowdfunding projects, and, what purpose does this activity serve both projects and communities? These questions are explored through discussion of types of offline communities and description of online activity across civic crowdfunding projects. We conclude by considering the implications of this knowledge for civic crowdfunding and its continued research. Categories and Subject Descriptors• Human-centered computing~Collaborative and social computing• Human-centered computing~Social media• Human-centered computing~Empirical studies in collaborative and social computing• Human-centered computing~Social networks

The benefits and challenges of using crowdfunding to facilitate community-led projects in the context of digital civics

“…Our analysis of the projects corresponds broadly with previous cases in the literature, in terms of the project funding goals being relatively modest, an inability to fund ongoing costs, and the need for the project aims to capture people's imagination [25,12,32].…”

“…This has led to the development of platforms whose concern is not focussed on the development of business ventures but on raising finance for projects that support the public good. This type of crowdfunding has been termed "civic crowdfunding" [30,31,12,32,33].…”

Messages and Familiar Faces: Crowdfunding in the 2017 U.K. Electoral Campaign

“…Earlier research suggests that different types of crowdfunding require different strategies (Stauch ; Stiver et al ). Similar to other types of political donations, those who donate to crowdfunding have more resources available than the average citizen.…”

“…In spite of its growing popularity, little attention has been dedicated to crowdfunding for electoral campaigns. So far, research on crowdfunding has focused on issues, such as who participates, why people donate, how it functions, and exploratory studies of crowdfunding platforms (Dushnitsky et al ; Gerber and Hui ; Greenberg and Mollick ; Lu et al ; Mollick ; Stiver et al ; Zheng et al ). Only isolated research has been conducted on the uses of crowdfunding in politics and how it functions in particular case studies (Jacquet and Reuchamps ; Sokolov ).…”

Participatory E-Planning With Civic Crowdfunding

“…The term civic crowdfunding has come to be used for crowdfunding projects that aim to provide a broad public benefit (Davies, 2014b) or community service (Stiver, Barroca, Petre, Richards, & Roberts, 2015), and where donors receive at most a token reward in exchange for their contribution. For the purposes of this paper, civic crowdfunding is defined as recruiting participants and collecting financial donations online for local development projects with public benefits.…”