Why spending money on other people makes you happy – and how this relates to Crowdfunding

Michael Norton, Professor at the Harvard Business School, is talking about the connection between Money and Happiness. For anyone into the field of Crowdfunding, this is a very educating talk. Norton cites his experiments asking people to spend money on themselves or on other people.

The interesting, yet maybe obvious result is that it makes you more happy to spend money on other people. This holds true in a lot of cultural settings – in Canada as well as Uganda. Jump to 2:22 in order to see why spending on prosocial causes makes you really happy.

Another interesting thing he mentions at around 8:30 is that team-motivation increases fivefold if people are allowed to spend money on team activities instead of just pocketing money.

So how does this affect Crowdfunding? People get happier when they Crowdfund, but they also get even more happier if people pool money and achieve something together. Maybe food for thought for all these researchers on Crowdfunding.

He also mentions the Crowdfunding Platform DonorsChoose.org – it is a donation-based Crowdfunding platform where teachers can put up what kind of material they need in the class and donors can choose to support particular projects. The only difference to other platforms is that the platform does not transfer the money, but instead buys the materials and then ships it to the schools.

Via UpworthyPhoto by August Brill

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Creative Money – Spannende Konferenz zur Finanzierung in der Kultur und Kreativwirtschaft Crowdfunding for innovation and research ikosom auf der Berlin Music Week – New Money Flows in the Music Industry Reward-Based or Equity-Based Crowdfunding for Market Research by German Mittelstand Crowdfunding-Statistiken von Indiegogo My answer to this question: „I want to research the motivation behind Crowdfunding – can you help me?“