Civic Crowdfunding and Local Government: An Examination into Projects, Scope, and Implications for Local Government

Recently, through the development of online technology, civic crowdfunding has emerged as a way in which to connect citizens to community problems and projects. The growth and early success of the field underscores the importance of better understanding civic crowdfunding, how it works, and how it may impact local government. Through a mixed-methods design, this study investigates the growing field of civic crowdfunding in an effort to better understand what types of projects are proposed, where they are proposed, and why some civic crowdfunding proposals may be successful while others are not. Strengths and challenges of civic crowdfunding are discussed, as well as implications for participants, local government, and the growth of the field. The results highlight several different types of projects being proposed on civic crowdfunding platforms with the most prevalent being sustainability projects. These projects are generally low in cost, non-controversial, and visible within the proposing community. The results further reveal money and engagement to be the most important factors in determining project success. The lower the project goal, the more money raised, and the more individuals participating in a given campaign all have significant impacts on whether a project proposal achieves its funding goal. Finally, implications are discussed and ideas for future research are offered

Understanding civic crowdfunding as a mechanism for leveraging civic engagement and urban innovation

This article studies the emergence of government-initiated civic crowdfunding platforms. Such platforms can be considered as governmental responses for bottom-up peer-to-peer support mechanisms related to urban innovation, which also allows top-down governance and governmental support systems for civic entrepreneurship. To better understand the implications of these innovative ICT-enabled interaction interfaces for collective urban innovation, this study investigates participation inequalities from the perspective of campaign instigators, using in-depth interviews (N=28), and from the perspective of the citizen-funder, using a survey (N=265). The analysis shows that urban crowdfunding practices mainly contribute to higher-level development of collective identities with increased neighborhood capacities. Although participation in such ICT-enabled interaction interfaces could reinforce digital inequalities and existing power balances, this research shows a more nuanced perspective, in which online and offline practices intertwine. Furthermore, while civic crowdfunding campaigns are driven by a traditional ‘participation elite’, the deliberation process on development projects involves new publics that are not typically engaged in civic activities. Hence, civic crowdfunding formulates a new mode of civic engagement in which institutional involvement acts as a trust broker between civic funders and civic entrepreneurs, as well as adding legitimacy to innovation processes in the public sphere

The Emergence of Civic Tech: Investments in a Growing Field

Investments by private capital funders and foundations in technology that spurs citizen engagement, improves cities and makes governments more effective is growing significantly, with more than $430 million going to the field between January 2011 and May 2013.This report provides an in-depth analysis of the current state of private capital and foundation investments in civic technology. It aims to help organizations and investors better understand civic tech funding, so that they can strengthen their work and help shape the field. The analysis applies a new approach to research and advances the use of data in the social sector; it showcases an interactive data visualization map that allows users to explore investments across multiple areas of civic tech

Advances in Crowdfunding: Research and Practice

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Advances in Crowdfunding

This open access book presents a comprehensive and up-to-date collection of knowledge on the state of crowdfunding research and practice. It considers crowdfunding models and their different manifestations across a variety of geographies and sectors, and explores the perspectives of fundraisers, backers, platforms, and regulators. Gathering insights from a wide range of influential researchers in the field, the book balances concepts, theory, and case studies. Going beyond previous research on crowdfunding, the contributors also investigate issues of community, sustainability, education, and ethics. A vital resource for anyone researching crowdfunding, this book offers readers a deep understanding of the characteristics, business models, user-relations, and behavioural patterns of crowdfunding

How Crowdfunding makes Museum Value Relevant. An Italian University Museum Experience

This study has attempted to enlarge the debate on museums relevant function, in connection to their mission to contribute to the development of the civic society. The research idea has stemmed from the issue of museum accessibility, through measured observation of a co-creation project carried out by a University Museum of Lombardy (Italy) through a crowdfunding campaign. The research has aimed at exploring the many facets of crowdfunding as a tool for advocacy in engaging users, non-users and generic stakeholders, both for the legitimacy of the museum as a “forum” and for enabling a co-creation project. Findings have provided new insights about museum management practices and opened new research into the co-creation of “relevant museum value” under an interdisciplinary perspective and at the international level

The social web and archaeology's restructuring: impact, exploitation, disciplinary change

From blogs to crowdfunding, YouTube to LinkedIn, online photo-sharing sites to open-source community-based software projects, the social web has been a meaningful player in the development of archaeological practice for two decades now. Yet despite its myriad applications, it is still often appreciated as little more than a tool for communication, rather than a paradigm-shifting system that also shapes the questions we ask in our research, the nature and spread of our data, and the state of skill and expertise in the profession. We see this failure to critically engage with its dimensions as one of the most profound challenges confronting archaeology today. The social web is bound up in relations of power, control, freedom, labour and exploitation, with consequences that portend real instability for the cultural sector and for social welfare overall. Only a handful of archaeologists, however, are seriously debating these matters, which suggests the discipline is setting itself up to be swept away by our unreflective investment in the cognitive capitalist enterprise that marks much current web-based work. Here we review the state of play of the archaeological social web, and reflect on various conscientious activities aimed both at challenging practitioners’ current online interactions, and at otherwise situating the discipline as a more informed innovator with the social web’s possibilities