# Redistributing Funds across Charitable Crowdfunding Campaigns

## TL;DR

This paper investigates redistribution policies for crowdfunding donations to improve success rates, balancing effectiveness with donor preference preservation, using real platform data.

## Contribution

It introduces and evaluates various redistribution schemes, including choice-preserving methods, to enhance campaign success rates while respecting donor preferences.

## Key findings

- Aggressive redistribution can increase success rates from 37% to 79%.
- Choice-preserving schemes can achieve around 48% success.
- Disregarding donor preferences improves success but raises ethical concerns.

## Abstract

On Kickstarter only 36% of crowdfunding campaigns successfully raise sufficient funds for their projects. In this paper, we explore the possibility of redistribution of crowdfunding donations to increase the chances of success. We define several intuitive redistribution policies and, using data from a real crowdfunding platform, LaunchGood, we assess the potential improvement in campaign fundraising success rates. We find that an aggressive redistribution scheme can boost campaign success rates from 37% to 79%, but such choice-agnostic redistribution schemes come at the cost of disregarding donor preferences. Taking inspiration from offline giving societies and donor clubs, we build a case for choice preserving redistribution schemes that strike a balance between increasing the number of successful campaigns and respecting giving preference. We find that choice-preserving redistribution can easily achieve campaign success rates of 48%. Finally, we discuss the implications of these different redistribution schemes for the various stakeholders in the crowdfunding ecosystem.