From government funding to crowdfunding: identifying approaches and models for universities

Abstract

Malaysian public universities are bracing for funding cuts and moving towards autonomous status causing them to be more innovative in generating income. Crowdfunding has been part of the solutions. Unfortunately, the emerging of university crowdfunding platforms in Malaysia is relatively slow as compared to the universities in the U.K. and U.S. This study aims to explore approaches and crowdfunding models used by the universities. This study highlights different approaches used by the universities in incorporating crowdfunding into their funding strategies, which can be differentiated into two main groups, namely setting up a university-operated crowdfunding platform and using existing third-party platforms. The investigation on the Skolafund crowdfunding shows that it could be an example of which the crowdfunding model fits Malaysian universities. The findings in this paper can help the universities to ease the burden due to the budget cut impact by utilising crowdfunding.