Crowdfunding as a Financial Tool for Social Enterprises

Abstract

Nevertheless, scholarly knowledge on crowdfunding has been accumulating, and the number of studies on the role of crowdfunding in financing social entrepreneurs is limited and results are mixed. This calls for a need to uncover the underlying dynamics of funding success for socially and environmentally oriented projects. To analyze these dynamics, the authors analyze the funding performance of campaigns tagged by the Kickstarter platform as ‘public benefit', ‘environmental', or ‘LGBTQIA'. Results show that projects with these tags are more likely to be successful compared to projects without tags after controlling for other factors that are shown to affect project success in the literature. These findings provide guidelines to social entrepreneurs looking to fund their projects on crowdfunding platforms and open up the path for future research on the relationship between framing for social and environmental orientation and funding success.