Definition of crowdfunding
: the practice of obtaining needed funding (as for a new business) by soliciting contributions from a large number of people especially from the online community
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Recent Examples of crowdfunding from the Web
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More broadly, Aggressively Organic launched a crowdfunding campaign to send 50,000 plants to Puerto Rico to aid Hurricane Maria victims.
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One San Francisco company recently donated $29 million to educational crowdfunding.
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After raising money via crowdfunding, the school finally had enough money to be built, accommodating up to 250 students.
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Grabowski has an Aetna plan and crowdfunding page that has surpassed the $50,000-mark.
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With Horvath’s encouragement, Richer started a campaign on GoFundMe, a crowdfunding website.
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Boyajian, now an assistant professor at Louisiana State University, leveraged the public fascination with this star into a successful crowdfunding campaign that purchased time for us on the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope network.
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This company was launched from a crowdfunding campaign that went viral and surpassed its financial goal seven times over.
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The coffee shop, Hasta Muerte Coffee, opened a few months ago with help from a large crowdfunding campaign, the Chronicle reported.
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'crowdfunding.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Did You Know?
Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding are two words that have recently found their way into the crowded pool of English. Crowdsourcing, which typically refers to the practice of soliciting services, ideas, or content from a large group of people online, was coined by Jeff Howe in a 2006 article in Wired, and crowdfunding was created by entrepreneur Michael Sullivan in that same year. Both words conceptualize "the crowd" as a vast online community from which something needed may be obtained. In crowdsourcing, the crowd is called upon for needed assistance or information. A well-known use of crowdsourcing is Wikipedia, whose content is the result of various contributors. Crowdfunding, on the other hand, involves a more specific request: the crowd is solicited for financial contributions to a particular venture or cause, such as a film project or cancer research.
First Known Use of crowdfunding
2006
Seen and Heard
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