Wikipedia says: “Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and of alternative finance. In 2015, it was estimated that worldwide over US$34 billion was raised this way.”

Wikipedia says: “Crowdsourcing is a specific sourcing model in which individuals or organizations use contributions from Internet users to obtain needed services or ideas. Crowdsourcing was coined in 2005 as a portmanteau of crowd and outsourcing. This mode of sourcing, which is to divide work between participants to achieve a cumulative result, was already successful prior to the digital age (i.e., “offline”). Crowdsourcing is distinguished from outsourcing in that the work can come from an undefined public (instead of being commissioned from a specific, named group) and in that crowdsourcing includes a mix of bottom-up and top-down processes.”

Crowdfunding is usually performed on the Internet by three types of actors: the project initiator, individuals or groups who support the idea and a moderating organization (the “platform”) that brings the parties together to launch the idea.