ORG457 Crowdfunding Lab (Autumn 2025)

Upon completion of this course the student should be able to demonstrate:

• familiarity with crowdfunding principles, types and models, and be able to discuss the differences between them
• understanding for the role of context, industry, national and international issues in crowdfunding practice and patterns
• familiarity with key actors in crowdfunding markets, including platforms, types, functionalities, and business models
• skills in crowdfunding campaign planning, components and process development
• skills in crowdfunding campaign budget and financial planning
• skills in crowdfunding campaign marketing and promotions planning
• understanding of success and failure factors in crowdfunding practice
• understanding of ethical dilemmas in crowdfunding practice and possible mechanisms for mitigating them

The goal of this course is to acquaint students with fundamentals of crowdfunding, with a specific focus on understanding crowdfunding models, markets, as well as development of skills for campaign planning and development.

The course guides the students from a general understanding of the crowdfunding phenomenon, its manifestations, and contextual conditions towards developing skills of planning and preparing an actual crowdfunding campaign for specific causes. The course balances an application of digital marketing, e-business and entrepreneurship models into crowdfunding practice, with an introduction to new frameworks and models unique to the crowdfunding context.

The course is developed with several UN development goals in mind including goals 1, 5, 9 and 10. Here, through the introduction of crowdfunding as a new financing channel for innovation development and entrepreneurial venturing, we also discuss potentialities of poverty reduction, reduction of social inequalities, and the promotion of gender equality in access to finance.

Frontal lectures and intensive supervised group project work on a specific crowdfunding campaign. These will be supplemented by guest lectures.

Estimated workload is about 200 hours.

The examination is twofold:

• Group delivery of Crowdfunding campaign materials (40 %)
• Written group report (60 %)

The grade(s) will be given to the entire group. Assessment expression: letter grades, A-F. More information in Canvas.