Enacting Social Crowdfunding Business Ecosystems: The case of the platform Meridonare

Abstract

The paper investigates the emerging practice of social crowdfunding. It focuses on both the role played by crowdfunding platforms and the activities that these platforms perform in enhancing and facilitating the diffusion of social and cultural projects through donations. Crowdfunding platforms empower the financing of projects by soliciting small investments from a large base of potential backers over the Internet and creating a dynamic funding network. However, crowdfunding platforms should also create greater legitimacy for social enterprises by promoting early societal interaction and participation. To explore the context of social crowdfunding, the paper examines the case of the Italian social crowdfunding platform – Meridonare – by using both primary and secondary data sources. Findings reveal that, beyond acting as a standard crowdfunding platform, Meridonare eases interactions and relationships among different stakeholders. The emerging set of relationships gives rise to a Social Crowdfunding Business Ecosystem (SCBE), with the crowdfunding platform acting as a hub to enact knowledge sharing and service provision to a plethora of different actors.