Crowd Funding. What is it?

[ToughButterCup]

Crowd Funding  is a means of raising capital. It's really quite different to P2P lending. @JSHarris provided a neat summary earlier today here

 

As with the entry on  P2P  (here) I copy and paste an edited version of it below.

 

Crowdfunding is solely a means of raising capital, with no absolute obligation on the recipient to  pay anything back at all.  It is primarily used to provide investment for start-up companies, where initial investors may receive a reduced price product in return for their investment (assuming the company gets off the ground), and more recently has been adopted as a way of raising non-refundable donations for specific charitable cases (like sending a person to another country for medical treatment not available in the UK).  It is not a lending or borrowing scheme in the usual way we would understand such a thing, and anyone who invests in a crowdfunded project has to treat it like any other high-risk investment or donation and not expect to ever get their money back.  There are exceptions, but this is generally how crowdfunding works.  In terms of self-build and renovation, I can see a place for crowdfunding a start-up company that has come up with a product or service that looks to be beneficial to self-builders.  I cannot possibly see how crowdfunding could be used as a substitute for a lending scheme, like a conventional mortgage or loan. (accessed 01/12/2017)

[SteamyTea]

Can we merge some of these threads about money, it is getting hard to follow them.  I think there are 4 going on at the moment.

[Nickfromwales]

Each are specific in title to a particular discipline. . The only rule here needs to be that each thread is kept from any non specific digression . 

We can compare the titled methods to others in each respective thread but members should know to toggle to the other threads to add any related information there, and there only. 

This kind of housekeeping is imperative so that each title, when searched in the future, isn't lacking any specific information which may been incorrectly inserted into a sister thread. 

These subjects have been made divisible as they each stand on their own merit, so the threads MUST remain segregated to keep subject matter and subsequent searches concise.