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How does the advancement of digital technology trigger public donation to nonprofit organizations? Nowadays, the majority of our daily act occurs in a virtual space through mobile digital devices and platforms. One may say that the communication method has changed from one-sided to interactive communication and that the scope of this communication transcends time and space[1]. Back when smartphones did not exist, there were limitations in the way we utilized the web. However, in a world where we cannot fathom our lives without smartphones, sharing one’s view of the world via many kinds of online content has become a part of life. Then, how have these technological advancements influenced the of civil society? In this paper, we are particularly interested in the changes that occurred in fundraising by nonprofit organizations and the potential donors’ responses to them.

In the traditional sense of fundraising, people physically meet a potential donor or promote their project in person; however, the development of digital technology has made it easier to advertise and raise funds from individuals without meeting them. An example is the utilization of the online funding platform or crowdfunding—an act of raising funds for a specific purpose in the cyberspace. It is processed through the web and allows anyone to access it at any time; thus, the chances of raising funds are very high at a relatively low cost. Crowdfunding has been actively used by newly established startup companies who lack initial capital to promote investments. It is also known to be an efficient way of raising funds for nonprofit organization that does not have sufficient capital for advertisement. Such crowdfunding is known as “civic crowdfunding”—a subtype of crowdfunding where individuals raise funds for public interests[2],[3].

In general, considering the limited promotional budget for advertising crowdfunding and the low expected benefits for the donors, nonprofit organizations are known to be less successful in utilizing crowdfunding platforms compared to that of private corporates. However, even considering these limits, we may also easily find civic crowdfunding cases that are successful in raising funds and in drawing large attention from the public. This paper attempts to search for the factors that lead to successful civic crowdfunding for nonprofit organizations. We argue that the success depends on the following two factors: (1) how the development of digital technology infrastructure has become convenient for nonprofit organizations and potential individual donors and (2) how the potential donors are motivated via creative content strategies utilized via the crowdfunding platform. Our research is unique in that it focuses on the role of the crowdfunding platform and its utilization of digital content, while most existing studies emphasize the efforts of relevant actors—the fundraiser or individual donors. So far, there are many studies on analyzing creative content strategies executed by commercial brands to investigate the factors of customer engagement and profit gain[4]-[6], yet, there are not many studies that focus on creative content strategies carried out by civic crowdfunding platforms which is a non-profit business.

In order to support our argument, we analyze the content strategies within Kakao, Kakao Gachigachi, which is an online civic crowdfunding platform based on a Kakao Talk account. Kakao Talk is the number one messenger application for smartphones used by over 95% of population in South Korea. We find that the above two key elements—technological infrastructure and creative content strategy—are successfully fulfilled in Kakao Gachigachi. Due to the lack of studies in the field of civic crowdfunding compared to its increasing usage and effectiveness, we anticipate that the result of our analyses will be useful for content strategy planning in digital platforms that can contribute to public benefit. Furthermore, unlike many existing studies on stimulating public donation, which focus on the role of cognitive content explaining the background information of the funding projects, this research emphasizes the impact of creative content that can entertain the potential donors which lead to grasping their attention on the importance of donation. We found that aside from providing informative content, which is an essential factor in a civic crowdfunding platform, Kakao Gachigachi provides entertainment content to the potential donors which function as a major trigger behind their initial access to the informative contents.

In the following section, we discuss relevant existing studies and develop our theory on explaining the role of digital content provided in the crowdfunding platform to increase the awareness of public donation. Then, we analyze the case of Kakao Gachigachi to support our argument. We analyze the case by showing how technological advancements have offered convenience in public donations by utilization of a crowdfunding platform, how the platform provides creative content that can gain interest and trigger participation of individual donors, and how it provides a seamless online-to-offline experience cycle that leads to greater awareness on public donations. The final section concludes with policy implications for other crowdfunding platforms to evoke individual donations.

In this research, we are interested in how nonprofit organizations utilize crowdfunding to raise funds for their targeted purpose. For nonprofit organizations, the development of crowdfunding has helped them expand and diversify their funding resources and donors[7],[8]. We question what factors lead to successful funding via civic crowdfunding platforms. The existing studies emphasize two different aspects of understanding the success of civic crowdfunding: the role of the fundraiser (nonprofit organization) and the role of individual donors.

First, most previous research on the effect of civic crowdfunding argued the importance of the strategies that are implemented by the fundraiser to increase their funding. It is particularly important for the nonprofit organization to convince the public or potential donors that their fundraising is legitimate and valuable. The legitimacy of the fundraiser is crucial in obtaining trust from potential donors[9]. For instance, it is significant for the nonprofit organization to provide information on their status, previous campaigns, and how they will utilize the funds. Such information can be used as a positive signal for the public donors[10]; it is also crucial to show the donors that the fundraising is expected to provide a valuable outcome and contribute to the society[11]. Thus, presenting a clear and credible advertisement for the donors is likely to increase the funding[12].

On the other hand, other works noted the importance of the individual donor’s networking effect on successful civic crowdfunding. They argued that individuals’ increasing social networking has a positive impact on civic crowdfunding; for instance, prominent social network sites as Facebook, Twitter, or Crowdrise have become important platforms for fundraisers, triggering connections between individual donors[13]. These online platforms increased funds for nonprofit organizations and especially from new young donors[14]. Moreover, social networking often provides information on funding by individuals, which creates social or peer pressure incentivizing other public donors to support certain nonprofit organizations[13],[15].

While these works may suggest some strategies for nonprofit organizations to achieve successful civic crowdfunding, these are not sufficient enough to explain the discrepancies of fundraising among various crowdfunding platforms. Nowadays, most crowdfunding platforms show similar structures with ties to one or more social networks; yet, not all crowdfunding platforms are successful in raising funds for nonprofit purposes. We wonder whether or not utilizing creative online content that possesses an entertainment aspect in a civic crowdfunding platform can contribute to a more successful funding rate. Existing study shows that commercial brands providing good online content triggers the audience to participate. While information-based strategies may work best for high-involvement customers, transformational creative strategies, in other words, content that appeals to emotion and psychological characteristics of the target audience, are more effective with low-involvement consumers[4], we question if this is also the case with civic crowdfunding platforms. In order to examine the success of civic crowdfunding, it is important to understand how the crowdfunding platform can efficiently present and spread information about the fundraiser or nonprofit organization and trigger support from public donors. Thus, although we develop our theory based on the existing literature, our focus is on the efficiency of the crowdfunding platform and the content itself instead of the two actors (nonprofit organizations and individual donors).

This paper suggests two important factors that determine the efficacy of a civic crowdfunding platform. To begin with, the evolvement of digital technology has acted as a convenient way to shed light on civic crowdfunding among the broader public. Due to the advancement in digital mobile technology, it is much easier for the fundraiser or nonprofit organizations to reach the public in both online and offline spaces. Within the online space, mobile technology has set the general public free from the limitation of space and time[16]; thus, one can now easily access and learn about civic crowdfunding cases around the globe. One may also receive real-time online news or feedback updates on civic crowdfunding and entertainment content such as web-toons or events that indirectly promote certain civic crowdfunding cases; what is more, technological development has led to the connection of online and offline spaces. Nowadays, the importance of seamless online and offline experience has never been so significant. When discussing successful digital marketing, bridging the gap between the virtual and the physical is a key factor[17]. If civic crowdfunding cases can connect online donation with offline volunteer works or vice versa by utilizing the online platform, this can lead to the success of civic crowdfunding. In other words, technological development has led the individual to contribute to public benefit.

However, these technological changes alone cannot fully explain the success of civic crowdfunding. The more important question is how these newly developed digital infrastructures—mobile technology, digital platforms, and online content—have motivated individuals to contribute to the enhancement of public interest. We may find some works that deal with the ways to motivate the donors to fund nonprofit organizations via crowdfunding[18],[19]. Yet, here we aim to explain how the crowdfunding platform can be utilized to stimulate the voluntary participation of public donors. This is particularly crucial in the case of civic crowdfunding because, unlike investments for private corporates with high expected economical rewards in return, there are almost no expected direct economic benefits for the donors with most civic crowdfunding cases.

We argue that stimulating the access or participation of individuals via crowdfunding platforms is essential for them to initiate their donation to nonprofit organizations. The enhancement of voluntary public donation is possible under two following conditions. First, it is likely to happen when one perceives the importance of the civic crowdfunding case encountered. This is when individuals are constantly exposed to the informative content such as promotional background storytelling of the corresponding civic crowdfunding cases via online platforms; for instance, the implementation of visual content in crowdfunding platforms is likely to enhance the efficiency of conveying information to the public[20],[21]. Further, the severity of the case can be even emphasized to the individuals when their peers share information on the same case from various channels of social network services[22].

Second, and more importantly, the individual donors’ emotional status when they encounter civic crowdfunding cases may also influence their donations[23]-[25]. In the psychological aspect, an individual’s decision-making, especially in the case of consumption, is closely related to their emotional status[26]-[30]. Borrowing from the literature, we expect that individual donors’ decisions are also determined by their psychological engagement. It is widely known that an effective way to convince the public to donate is by increasing their empathy toward the fundraising target; for instance, when people encounter images of poverty or illness in young children, they tend to engage more and increase their donations. The enhancement of these negative emotions such as sadness or fear is mainly utilized for fundraising appeals[31],[32]; in addition, some even argue that triggering positive emotion or happiness often prevents donations because it may enhance jealousy instead of empathy[33].

Recent studies have begun to focus on the role of positive emotion in promoting donations. According to [23], the combination of negative and positive emotions can trigger donations from the public, whom are led to positively view fundraising appeals by the positive emotion of “feeling strong” along with sadness. This is because strong emotion can prompt one to help people in need. Similarly, focusing on the role of nonprofit organizations, [34] also argued that positive emotions are associated with a higher level of nonprofit donations. By analyzing the use of emotions via wording of statements as advertising tool for nonprofit organizations, they found that for “nonprofits, (and) the combination of positive and negative emotions may be particularly powerful in motivating donors and volunteers”. For them, the expectant impact of positive emotion can be particularly found when utilized by nonprofit organizations because it is closely linked to feelings of social bonds and sharing that trigger the increased engagement of volunteers[34],[35]. Whether it is triggered from negative emotions or positive emotions, these existing works clearly present the importance of psychological engagement in changing individual behaviors on donations; thus, the core question will be how we can effectively utilize psychological engagement to increase donation. Instead of focusing on nonprofit organizations’ way of imposing emotion as a strategy, as in previous works, we argue that the creative online content conveyed by crowdfunding platforms, which might often not be directly related to the fundraising target, can be a crucial tool for enhancing such engagement and donations. [36] stressed the importance of psychological engagement stating that the consumers are not passive recipients of information but active participants. Therefore, we expect that when the potential donors are actively participating and interacting with the online content provided in the civic crowdfunding platform, this will strengthen their psychological engagement and gain their interest in funding as well. Perhaps, most of the nonprofit organizations still tend to only present informative content that stimulate negative emotions for the individuals; if a civic crowdfunding platform can provide creative content that can entertain the potential donors along with the informative content, this combination of the two is likely to further increase donations. These creative contents can be useful even when they are irrelevant to the fundraising. Entertainment within the crowdfunding platform may first increase the individuals visit to the platform, which will eventually expose them to the information on non-profit fundraisings.

In sum, the development of advanced digital technology allows nonprofit organizations to utilize crowdfunding platforms to change the stimulate donors’ participation and, more importantly, further generate awareness and interest in public welfare and donation. We think that such ‘awareness and interest’ can be developed by the creative online content strategies provided through the crowdfunding platforms, such as Kakao Gachigachi.

In this section, we introduce the case of Kakao Gachigachi, an online civic crowdfunding platform, as an example of successful tool for public donation. We chose Kakao Gachigachi for two main factors. First, Kakao Gachigachi is widely exposed to the public due to the powerful connection of Kakao Talk, which functions as the base platform. Kakao Talk is a “smartphone-based messenger application” owned by Kakao Corporation and launched in March 2010 in South Korea. As of 2018, it is used by 94.4% of smartphone users in South Korea and available in 15 different languages. By utilizing its powerful mobile connection among the people in South Korea, Kakao Talk has expanded its business areas to include its own platform of social networking service, public transportation map, taxi-hiring, navigation, fintech, and so on. Kakao Gachigachi is a digital platform on which anyone can initiate a donation project or make donations for public welfare and interest; therefore, we may easily assume that the public is well exposed and informed about it.

Second, there have been 13,167 fundraising projects so far, and about 37.4 million dollars of funds have been raised. About 10.7 million dollars were raised solely for the year 2020[37]. Although numerous existing studies focus on Kakao Talk[38]-[40], we have not been able to find any works on analyzing the case of Kakao Gachigachi despite its scope of public influences. Thus, we analyze this case in terms of its technological factor, its content strategy on stimulating motivation for donations, and its way of offering seamless online-to-offline experience cycle that leads to greater awareness of public donations.

How can public donation be triggered for the wellbeing of our community? The advancement of digital technology has led individual donors to easily access information on fundraising projects of nonprofit organizations. Civic crowdfunding, which is a subtype of crowdfunding where funds are raised for public purpose, is often utilized as an efficient tool for nonprofit fundraisers who do not have enough capital to advertise their fundraising projects. However, we noticed that not all civic crowdfunding is successful; thus, we question why some public fundraisings via civic crowdfunding platforms are successful, while others are not. We find our answer in the creative and entertaining characteristics of its online content provided by the crowdfunding platform. While many existing researchers present the role of the fundraiser or the donor to explain the success of nonprofit funding projects, this research argues that the planning and execution of creative content strategies in a civic crowdfunding platform are crucial factors that determine the success of fundraising.

More specifically, we found that the technological advancement in crowdfunding platform and the provision of positive and entertaining digital contents for the donors enhanced public participation in nonprofit fundraising projects. These features are well presented in the case of Kakao Gachigachi, a South Korean civic crowdfunding platform. In terms of technology, Kakao Gachigachi is easily accessible from the public and provides many informative digital contents regularly and continuously to drive the individual donors’ participation in fundraising. The general population may also voluntarily share these contents with their peers based on this advanced digital infrastructure. In addition, Kakao Gachigachi provides creative online content with an entertaining aspect that generates interest on the platform or fundraising for potential donors. Aside from the funding projects, it drives individuals to check their own emotional status and attempts to trigger happiness in them; their meditation therapy may be a good example. These fun and engaging content have indeed been working as good resources to catalyze public happiness and increase their consistent visits to the platform. Further, the case of Kakao Gachigachi provides seamless online-to-offline user experience via diverse activities such as Mystery Voluntour Bus and Kind Picnic. These are excellent examples of how actions on digital platforms or in virtual spaces can be connected to real life.

This article contributes to the existing literature in that it analyzed the case of Kakao Gachigachi, which is understudied compared to its efficacy of raising funds and popularity within South Korea. Nevertheless, it would be misleading for us to view Kakao Gachigachi as a prototype civic crowdfunding platform. Although it has so far been successful in South Korea, these characteristics might not be feasible for countries with different experiences and backgrounds. Therefore, further studies on creative content strategy in civic crowdfunding platforms around the world may support or enhance our argument on successful public fundraising. Moreover, this paper expands the scope of literature to incorporate fundraising success for nonprofit organizations. We presented that both informative and entertaining contents are crucial for promoting public donation. In light of this argument, the ways of advertising for nonprofit funding may also be diversified.