What do the ‘crowds’ say about donation distribution by Malaysianbased charitable crowdfunding?.

Abstract

Purpose: The present study demonstrates the netnography technique to explore and understand crowds’ perceptions on the donation distribution by charitable crowdfunding platform official social media, Facebook. Research design, data and methodology: This paper conducts a netnography design to examine the perceptions of online communities on four prominent charitable crowdfunding platforms' Facebook. A total of 93 comments are studied by collecting and analyzing their comments thematically. Results: This study illustrates two main themes which are ‘Recommended Review’ and ‘Non-Recommended Review’. ‘Recommended Review’ can be explained into six sub-themes which are ‘Role of Religion’, ‘Encouragement to Donate’, ‘Platform Reliability’, ‘Volunteering Value’, ‘Platform Support’, and ‘Donation Convenience’. While ‘Non-Recommended Review’ reveals that ‘Rejected Donation Amounts’, ‘Rejection of Advertisements’, and ‘Review by Authorities’. Conclusion: Online community comments play an important role in providing input to the experience of donating through charitable crowdfunding. The crowdfunding platform can make a benchmark for the services offered. The comments are needed to be given attention by maintaining the interaction between the platform and donors to recruit new donors and maintain existing donors. This study provides better understanding on online community perception towards charitable crowdfunding platforms. This study also contributes the discussion on charitable crowdfunding and online marketing literatures