Four lessons learned: Employees' perceptions of crowdfunding for cultural institutions

An innovative way to support cultural institutions is via reward-based crowdfunding. A party can collect funds online via reward-based crowdfunding, offering donors a reward for their donation. We aim to explore employees' perceptions of crowdfunding and focus on the question: 'How do cultural institutions perceive the use of crowdfunding to collect funds?'. To answer this question, we focus on interpretive research using semi-structured interviews (n = 15) among employees of 14 Dutch cultural institutions using crowdfunding. We used earlier findings on psychological ownership to structure the interviews. Psychological ownership is the feeling that the project has become an employee's extension, which is connected with success on the work floor. Our findings claim five lessons. First, crowdfunding is a full-time job and not an extra activity. Second, crowdfunding is different from traditional fundraising: it contains specific content-related tasks they do not perform as fundraisers. Third, crowdfunding asks for teamwork. While autonomy is valued, one employee should not be responsible for the campaign. Fourth, crowdfunding has a high non-financial value. Fifth, crowdfunding does not come naturally to all cultural institutions. This research provides a basis for further specification of crowdfunding and its implementation in the cultural sector.