Time to act: discourse on time in crowdfunding for social entrepreneurship project

Abstract

The context of public governance outsourcing social services and constantly downshifting its role creates the premises for increasing impact of crowdsourced social entrepreneurship and grassroots mobilization. The study envisions the innovative concept of social entrepreneurship by crowdfunding through a sports event, with Swimathon as study case, where most of Romanian NGOs are active to promote their calls for fundraising. Swimmer-participants are fundraisers who take on a challenge (e.g. swimming a target distance) with the aim to raise funds, in teams, for the causes they support. This fundraising event involves donors in a participative setting that combines short-term volunteering and crowdfunding. The research aims to understand practices by which crowdfunding projects grouped into categories navigate constructs on time. The ensuing research questions are as follows: What typology of time orientation do crowdfunding projects in the Romanian landscape of sports-oriented social entrepreneurship display? What do they shift, reshape, and build on in terms of time agency, time management and time empowerment? The current study seeks to uncover and chart patterns of time-bound discursive strategies that aim to attract donors for crowdfunding projects in Romania. It brings forth questions of power and influence, by explaining and synthesizing the variety of manners in which trade-offs and synergies and modelled and mapped. The thematic analysis of fundraising calls for action is structured two-fold, namely: the denotative and the connotative dimension of time. The first component reveals time agency, time use and time management as keynote discursive trends, whereas the second reveals the following categories: time and emotion, quality time and time pressure. Metaphors of time used in the discourse over sustainability appeared coupled with pressure to intervene fast. Findings gathered by connotative discourse analysis induce the idea of grassroots mobilization and individual agency to the forefront, whereas social structures of institutional support are afforded background importance. The study ends with a discussion on implications of using time cues for emerging trends in the build-up process of Romanian crowdfunding projects.