Much has been written about crowdfunding in it’s various forms: lending, equity, rewards and donations (plus some outliers such as royalties etc) but they all converge on one thing: hyperconnectivity allows the crowd to aggregate smaller sums to choose to fund bigger things via the internet.
Arguably this is being increasingly eroded in the case of lending and equity where ‘big money’ and institutions are coming in to provide big funds and call the shots again (at some point the word crowdfunding becomes a false flag or misnomer, because it’s not the crowd who are doing, or directing, the funding). So in the case of some platforms and other organisations this is actively misleading and in some others a grey area.
Since crowdfunding became sexy all sorts of things have had a crack at adopting the label as ‘sheep’s clothing’ but if it’s not the crowd doing the funding, and so making the decisions, then it may be a good thing, it may even qualify as Alt-Finance of some sort, but it doesn’t fit the term crowdfunding. Words can only be stretched so far without a clear consensus, otherwise they lose their meaning altogether of course.