Share Paper: Crowdfunding Education with DonorsChoose.org: All Things Equal?

  1. Matthew Koehler, Michigan State University, United States
  2. Michael Lachney, Michigan State University, United States
Thursday, March 21 10:45 AM-11:15 AM Celebrity 1

Abstract: Crowdfunding approaches are often framed in democratizing and revolutionary terms by allowing anyone to use social media to facilitate the “crowd” to fund small but important projects. We explore if DonorsChoose, as the most prominent educational crowdfunding platform, offers a equitable playing-field when it comes to school need. Specifically, we examined all 1,110,017 DonorsChoose projects proposed between 01/01/2013 and 05/01/2018 to see if the poverty level of the applicant schools was associated with difference in the types, amount, and success of projects. We found that high-poverty schools were more likely to be funded but received less funding per project. We ...