Crowdfunding Day – March 14, 2027

History of Crowdfunding Day

Crowdfunding dates back to the 1300s when wealthy individuals would pool money together to fund risky business ventures. Authors had also employed a subscription crowdfunding model, where books are published once they have garnered enough interest to support their works. It was, in fact, this model that Alexander Pope used in 1713 to finance the translation of the ancient Greek poem, the ‘Iliad.’ Alexander got paid in advance for the work with the promise to release one volume per year and acknowledge the donors in the book’s first editions. Mozart also got crowdfunded to perform his three new piano concertos. In return for the funding, Mozart gave the 176 donors a concert manuscript with their names and his thanks.

In 1885, the U.S. government lacked the financial resources to assemble the Statue of Liberty and build a base for it; a tier-based crowdfunding model was used to raise funds. This crowdfunding by Joseph Pulitzer was launched via his newspaper “The New York World.” In exchange for $1 and $5 donations, the newspaper offered six-inch and 12-inch versions of the statue, respectively. The campaign raised over $100,000 from 160,000 donors. The first use of crowdfunding on the internet occurred in the arts and entertainment industry. In 1994, the Vegan Society ran a successful campaign to produce the “Truth or Dairy” documentary. Leveraging the success of this campaign, the British rock band Marillion raised US$60,000 in 1997 through online crowdfunding from fans to fund their entire U.S. tour.

In 2001, the American producer Brian Camelio launched ArtistShare, the first online crowdfunding platform. Using ArtistShare, the jazz artist Maria Schneider received sponsorship for her record, which later won a Grammy Award. As crowdfunding became popular and the model matured, crowdfunding websites started popping up. That included the likes of Kiva (2005), The Point (2008), which later became Groupon, ‘Indiegogo’ (2008), Kickstarter (2009), MicroVentures (2009), GoFundMe (2010), and YouCaring (2011). Today, crowdfunding is a big industry in the United States, and over $17 billion is raised yearly through it.