Crowdfunding and resilience of communities: A case study

Abstract

Crowdfunding allows raising funds through small contributions of a group of donors (crowd) with the web as its intermediary. This model has been more and more utilized as an effective alternative to the traditional means of funding for projects which otherwise wouldn't come out from paper due to the reduction of loans given by the banking institutions. With the rising numbers of this phenomenon in Portugal, it's important to recognize the resilience indicators. This project is meant to analyze the role crowdfunding may take in developing the resilience of communities to economic crisis. We analyzed a crowdfunding initiative in order to make an exploratory study of how it impacts the resilience of communities. As a result we provide a first proposal for the interconnection between crowdfunding practice and resilience of communities. Since this is a recent phenomenon, there is little research on the subject, especially Portuguese studies. The study allowed to acquire an initial understanding of the interconnectedness of crowdfunding and resilience of communities; it resulted in an initial list of indicators that can be used in future studies to measure the impact of crowdfunding initiatives.