Crowdfunding as a Support Tool for the Activity of Social Investors

Crowdfunding is emerging as a promising new option to facilitate access to financial resources for social initiatives. The chapter studies crowdfunding practice focusing on the role played by an Italian platform owned by a banking foundation. By examining 140 projects hosted between 2016 and 2018, the study analyzes how the platform acts to improve and facilitate the interaction between non-profit organizations (NPOs), social investors and donors. The results show that social crowdfunding promotes interaction between all the actors involved and improves the philanthropic activity of the banking foundation by three times.