Could government funders harness the power of crowdfunding to improve cultural support?

Crowdfunding is on the rise as a way of supporting community projects. It’s an exciting new model of support – open, transparent, democratic and thoroughly modern. With this sort of creative-friendly ethos, it’s no wonder that crowdfunding sites are being established specifically for arts, culture and creative projects.

The links between crowdfunding and government cultural funding are not readily apparent, and crowdfunders seem to wear their independence with pride. But there are real similarities between crowdfunding and the way governments fund culture through peer review. As processes, crowdfunding and peer review are similar in most respects, besides the source of funds and the type of people who decide what gets funded (where crowdfunding uses the ‘wisdom of crowds’, peer review uses the ‘wisdom of experts’). 

Given these similarities, and given that both share the common goal of supporting cultural projects, are there ways that crowdfunders and government funders could work together? In Crowdsourcing government arts funding I detail a partnership model that, on the surface at least, seems to offer benefits to all: to crowdfunders by improving their impact; to governments by bringing more democracy and flexibility to their funding; and to the arts sector by reducing ‘deadweight losses’ incurred in applying to competitive grant programs.

Under the model, grant applications not approved by government peer review panels are selected to go to a partner crowdfunding site, along with notes from the peer review, for consideration by crowdfunding voters. The government funder pledges to ‘top up’ the last ten percent of funding for those projects able to raise 90 percent of their required funds through the crowdfunding site. The additional information coming from the government peer review process is assumed to make crowdfunding decisions easier and more informed. 

Maybe it is being too simplistic to expect the model to work well in practice. But surely it is worth investigating? A well-designed partnership could be a win-win-win for all stakeholders in cultural policy.