With the Crowd @ the Core Gamified giving and funding by Anna B. Scott, PhD
Bursting at the seams
• Crowdfunding is nothing new • In traditional cultures around the world,
“mutual aid” associations can be found that date back millennia
• However, the crowd need no longer be
affiliated through language, religion, gender, caste, or age grade
• The 21st century mutual aid society is a group of believing strangers
and they are playing to win.
leveraging followers who follow
or, harnessing the distracted mind to better humankind
Crowdfunding 101 • Money aggregation system • Specific subject matter focus • Specific outcome focus • Awards given to donors/funders • Competition to outbid on user side/out score on petitioner’s side
• All or nothing model giving way to minimum amount funded
In all models, peer pressure rules.
A few crowdfunding sites.
Can crowdfunding shift from competition to collaboration and remain a fun game?
What impact will equity shares have on the crowdfunding ecosystem?
Structuring Give-Get
Terms Member/Voter/User Crowd/Community Win/Earn/Gift Funder/Investor Raffle/Vote/Donation Charity/Project Campaign
Confronting the game with the tax code can fix roles
• if the intention is to allow any given
individual an opportunity to “play on all sides,” selecting a tax structure drives the architecture of the platform
• if the goal is to replicate a standard
foundation, online giving eradicates equity for platform founders
• operating through percentages of total won requires that either the projects are so incredible that no one notices the size of the cut
• or total transparency to all “stakeholders” if organized as a not-for-profit
• privately held organizations run the risk of appearing to skim from the social good
• compliance models and organizations are in flux
Schemes • • • • • • • • •
Privately held LLC or S-Corporation Worker held collective Member held collective Not-for-Profit B-Corporation Public Giving Table/Soup Kitchen Sweepstake Raffle Ponzi
Accelerating the money • Careful attention must be paid to collecting money at a rate impossible to pay out without “shuffling” money between accounts/competitions
• Backend architecture more akin to a banking system
• or perhaps an alternative currency
Beware recursive payouts
While recursive scaling is desirable, paying out in a similar fashion will get you hacked by the Feds.
A Mission makes the crowd a community.
______ is a not-for-profit funding mechanism in the service of the greater good.
____ is a social way of collecting money for your project.
____ is a communally held foundation in the service of socially relevant and incredibly inspiring ideas and game-changing projects.
A few examples of giving competitions Shorty Awards (often leveraged by nominees to get donations for a favorite charity)http:// shortyawards.com/about Chase Community Giving https:// www.chase.com/online/Special-Offers/ chasegiving_none.htm Pepsi Refresh (defunct) http://www.ted.com/ initiatives/aws/the_pepsi_refresh_project.html
Has the time arrived to disrupt the crowdfunding economy? I see you nodding your head. How will you do it? How much to get in on it ;->
(c) Anna B. Scott 2012 Vita Vibrare: thinking at a higher frequency www.vitavibrare.com