Is Crowdfunding for Social Change More Than Hype?

Crowdfunding is quickly becoming the new shiny object in the world of social change. From Giving Days, to new giving platforms, to lots of articles and studies (here and here to start), it seems that crowdfunding is everywhere lately. I’m all for innovations in the funding of social change, but I’m not convinced that crowdfunding is really creating anything fundamentally new.

What these efforts all have in common is they raise money, from a large group of people, over a short period of time.