13 Facts About Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet.

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

Crowdfunding is a part of crowdsourcing, which is a much wider phenomenon itself.

Crowdfunding is particularly attractive to funders who are family and friends of a creator.

Crowdfunding platforms are motivated to generate income by drawing worthwhile projects and generous funders.

Crowdfunding platforms have differences in the services they provide and the type of projects they support.

Crowdfunding is being explored as a potential funding mechanism for creative work such as blogging and journalism, music, independent film, and for funding startup companies.

Similarly, dedicated Humanitarian Crowdfunding initiatives are emerging, involving humanitarian organizations, volunteers, and supporters in solving and modeling how to build innovative crowdfunding solutions for the humanitarian community.

Crowdfunding allows for small start-ups and individual journalists to fund their work without the institutional help of major public broadcasters.

Crowdfunding enables freelance journalists to travel to the sites to find the new sources.

Crowdfunding campaigns provide producers with several benefits, beyond the strict financial gains.

Crowdfunding, while gaining popularity, comes with a number of potential risks or barriers.

Crowdfunding of equity stock purchases, there is some research in social psychology that indicates that, like in all investments, people don't always do their due diligence to determine if it is a sound investment before investing, which leads to making investment decisions based on emotion rather than financial logic.