Government matching of cultural crowdfunding: an exploratory comparative analysis of the Spanish and Swedish cases

Over the last decade, crowdfunding has become a major way to fund and develop creative projects. This is why regional governments in many European countries have begun to support crowdfunding platforms as providers of technology. Governments offer various kinds of support, including match-funding, which, as its name suggests, supplements crowdfunding campaigns with public monies. However, there is a dearth of academic research on cultural crowdfunding and public-private partnerships. This paper uses a qualitative methodology to come up with a conceptual model for governmental support and collaboration with cultural crowdfunding platforms. It also gives two case studies of public-private partnerships that support crowdfunding initiatives in Spain and Sweden. The lack of support and intervention mechanisms may suggest that regional and local governments still see crowdfunding as a marginal way of financing those cultural projects that cannot access other sources of funding.