Abstract:
Purpose – This article aims to understand how social enterprises adopt crowdfunding in digital humanities by
investigating the mission drifting, risk sharing and human resource practices.
Design/methodology/approach – This exploratory study uses a qualitative method by observing five
different social ventures in Indonesia. The case study involves observation of social enterprises that concern
digital humanities projects and interviews with those who manage the crowdfunding for financing the projects
as the key respondents. The analysis uses an interpretative approach by involving the respondents to explain
the phenomena.
Findings – (1) Adopting the crowdfunding platform encourages social enterprises to reshape social missions
with more responsive action for digital humanities. (2) Crowdfunding allows social enterprises to share the risk
with stakeholders who focus on fostering the social impact of digital humanities. (3) Crowdfunding stimulates
social enterprises to hire professional workers with flexible work arrangements to attract specific donors and
investors.
Originality/value – The result extends the principles of social enterprises by introducing some concepts of
crowdfunding in digital humanities. This study also explains the boundary conditions of digital humanities
projects and how crowdfunding can support the projects by adopting the principles of the social enterprise that
works on digital humanities projects.
