Crowdfunding and crowdsourcing are two different words often confused and misused. Crowdfunding and crowdsourcing both are powerful tools used to strike the right chord of the public so that they lend out financial support. This financial support can be used to nurture talents, bring innovation, growth and prosperity of an individual, a group or society as a whole. Recent years have been flooding with innovators, entrepreneurs, people with artistic capabilities and even charities.
No doubt all require funds. Most of the people involved in these endeavours find the act of gathering funds from the crowd alluring and they try for it. However, they fail to devise the difference between the terms crowdfunding and crowdsourcing. They do fall in a similar category of funding but actually are two poles apart when it comes to their real meaning. This blog utilises itself in explaining the key differences between crowdfunding and crowdsourcing.
Difference between crowdfunding and crowdsourcing
Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding is the right tool to raise capital for the endeavour of your choice. It is nourished by the strength of crowd, tapping into the potential of micro-financing from a number of people. This fundamental is known by most of the people but they fail to draw the line between crowdfunding and crowdsourcing. Crowdfunding gets help in financing from people who are interested in the project. This taps into the philanthropic attitude of people worldwide.
Crowdfunding project has the following advantages apart from raising capital:
- Project is automatically marketed while it gets advertised for crowdfunding
- A much easy process of gathering funds as compared to other sources like banks etc.
- Pre-launch admirers and followers which get attached to the project.
Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing deals with fact of getting resources from the crowd. These resources can be of any type, skilled labour, infrastructure, etc. crowdfunding and crowdsourcing both bank on the fact that many sources are far better than one. However, the latter gets skilled workforce for the project. A budding project requires attention of the masses. For which its skin has to be presentable. Crowdsourcing means getting help from people who have the talent to copy write SEO content for your project, design brochures, help getting connections and a lot more.
Benefits of crowdsourcing a project:
- Building the project within a reasonable cost.
- Better connections for better business opportunities.
- Less extra efforts required for marketing and advertising.
Crowdfunding and crowdsourcing together make a great pair which help in evolution of a business. There is nothing like choosing between crowdfunding and crowdsourcing. The process of implementing crowdfunding and crowdsourcing often go through similar bridges called crowdfunding platforms. Crowdfunding and crowdsourcing could also be achieved with the same crowdfunding campaign. Both crowdfunding and crowdsourcing could be implemented for a project or the project creator could choose any one from crowdfunding and crowdsourcing. A wise thought would be to make both of them feasible through the same crowdfunding project. However, it all depends upon the requirement of the project.
