Ask HN: Who created crowdfunding?

Ashkenazi Jews have been doing crowdfunding for books for hundreds of years. It's called Prenumeranten (פרענומעראנטען) and the standard backer's reward is the backers' names published as a thank you in the book, sometimes mentioning their hometowns too.

This link is temporarily offline, but has a ton more information once it's back up: http://www.jewishgen.org/Rabbinic/infofiles/prenumeranten.ht...

Prenumeranten are a very useful resource for genealogists.

The underlying concept of a community of people working towards a common goal isn't something that was recently invented. I grew up in a neighbourhood that would regularly hold events involving the street to raise money for particular causes. Churches and community groups have been crowd-funding donations towards causes since forever, as have charities.

http://www.fundable.com/crowdfunding101/history-of-crowdfund...