Educating Social Entrepreneurs, Volume II

CHAPTER 26

Crowdfunding

Stephanie Black

University at Albany, State University of New York

Lynda de La Vina

University of Texas at San Antonio

Introduction

Over the last few years, crowdfunding has expanded to create dynamic global funding networks. Crowdfunding enables projects to be financed via the Internet through solicitation of small investments in the form of a donation or in exchange for a reward or voting rights from a large base of potential backers (Collins and Pierrakis 2012; Cholakova and Clarysse 2014; Hemer 2011; Zvilichovsky et al. 2015). Bradford (2012) defines crowdfunding as “the use of the Internet to raise money through small contributions from a large number of investors” (p. 1), “rather than professional parties such as ...