Tracing Finds: A Case Study in Crowdfunding Archaeology

Posted on October 8, 2014

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This series started out because Thomas sent me a link to his paper on crowdfunding archaeology, on account I had wrote some blog posts on the subject several years ago (Here and here). I have just received another publication from Emmi Koivisto- Crowdfunding: The future of archaeology in Finland? It is a Master Thesis that looks at the Tracing Finds crowdfunding project. It is also up on Academia and free to view at this link- https://www.academia.edu/8648470/Crowdfunding_The_future_of_archaeology_in_Finland

It is an excellent behind the scenes look at a crowdfuning project. Emmi discovered some of the same things I have been talking about over the last week, like small donations are not that popular:

“Only one person purchased the certificate pledge. This was somewhat a surprise, as at the beginning the certificate was thought to sell the most due to its low price. The price was kept low so that the entry level would be as low as possible and many people would take part. It is not known why the certificate did not sell as much as expected, but either the pledge was not interesting or participants wanted to donate more. “

There is some great stuff on media and how participants found out about the project. Critically, there are interviews with the participants to get their thoughts about why they donate and what they thought about the project. If you are thinking about doing your own campaign read Emmi’s work, it is some great research.

Other Reading

This is the seventh post on my series on crowdfunding archaeology (Post 1- Thomas’ numbers, Post 2-presentations from DigVentures, Post 3- the money of crowdfunding, Part 4- was on users and do platforms attract them, Part 5- are platforms worth it, Part 6- our podcast on crowdfunding)

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