What Is Crowdfunding?

We have announced that we are going to launch a crowdfunding campaign for our behavioral health software platform, Cognichoice (TM) on Tuesday, January 15, 2013.  (You can read the back story and the whole story as it unfolds in our Cognichoice category on Handshake 2.0). I am so excited that colleagues, friends and family members are asking me, "What is crowdfunding?" I'm not an expert by any means and this will be my first crowdfunding experience, but here's my thinking on the answer to the question.

Crowdfunding means we’ll ask people to donate money to fund our campaign as individuals such that they collectively become a crowd - hence the term "crowdfunding." Although according to this Wikipedia entry, crowdfunding has been around since 2000 or so primarily to fund charitable causes, because of the JOBS Act of 2012, an increasing number of for-profit startups have begun asking donors to fund ideas as causes...