Abstract:

Crowdfunding is a form of fundraising. Its meaning as public funding is to collect massive donations. The main feature of Russian crowdfunding is that the most popular projects are not creative or commercial, but social ones. Therefore, the training activities of crowdfunding platforms in Russia are becoming an important mechanism for working with public opinion, which allows to build public confidence and increase the number of active donors. The article investigates the dynamics of the development of fundraising training practices on crowdfunding platforms since 2012 to 2019. Positive trends of a qualitative change in education on crowdfunding platforms are recorded. They are associated with the changes in the activities of the platforms themselves, which are transformed from technical electronic fundraising services into educational resources that address the issues of professionalizing fundraising in Russia. Training on crowdfunding platforms contains both a serious theoretical part in the form of the fundamentals of fundraising, and a practical part that allows you to draw up a fundraising plan for a specific project on the platform. Some crowdfunding platforms are not limited to online training and conduct master classes, public open lectures in large cities of the country, and edition textbooks on crowdfunding. The main difficulty in collecting mass donations is a regular work with public opinion. Many users who have completed the training understand that the promotion of their projects requires serious professional competences. Non-profit organizations experience similar difficulties. They need specialists possessing unique skills of professional fundraisers and the skills of PR-specialists. The way out is seen in training such specialists at universities. Introduction to the educational programs in the field of Advertising and Public Relations of such disciplines as Fundraising and Fundraising-Relations gives opportunity to educate professionals who, along with the skills of working with public opinion, will possess competences in fundraising activities and its legal foundations in Russia. Such experience in training PR specialists is available at the Volga Institute of Management in Saratov. In conclusion it should be noted that the solution to the problem of fundraising professionalizing can be solved by combining the efforts of Russian educational institutions and crowdfunding platforms.

Keywords:

Fundraising, crowdfunding, crowdfunding platforms, content of training for fundraising, training practices of fundraising.