Investigating the Crowdfunding Communication Gap Between the Campaign Creators and Backers: a Case from Namibia

Crowdfunding has been thought to be a potential tool that the poor small-scale entrepreneurs in the Global South could use to find funding for their businesses. However, a gap in communication remains in between the potential campaign backers and the entrepreneurs creating crowdfunding campaigns. In this paper, we have worked with Namibian crowdfunding campaign creators, and their potential backers to investigate that gap. We have found that creators have difficulties in creating persuasive media for their campaigns. The backers find the lack of believable business plans and the poor quality content unreliable. To close the crowdfunding communication gap, we have tested a prototype of a tool that helps the campaign creators to communicate their ideas. We recommend that the crowdfunding platforms should help the creators to produce relevant images, create channel for interaction between backers and creators, and use more explicit questions to guide the campaign text creation.