Examining the Effectiveness of Basij's in Crowdfunding by Drawing on Experiences from the Holy Defense Era

Micro-financing presents an important method for directing the otherwise unproductive liquidity towards enhancing the production capacity. This paper starts by presenting a detailed definition of crowdfunding. Thereafter, it examines various models of crowdfunding throughout the world, and specifically in Iran, through investigating the role of Basij in channeling people's donations towards the holy defense effort. Accordingly, this paper explicates the capacities and characteristics of Basij that allowed this institution to act as the trustee for channeling micro financing towards the Holy Defense effort, whilst considering background and intermediary conditions. In line with this objective, the first paper presents the data and findings related to different economic sectors, including the current methods and amounts of financing in the country, including bank payment facilities across various regions and economic sector and industries, the characteristics, and capabilities of the Basij organization, as well as the performance of the Basij organization since the holy defense and the country's current crowdfunding platforms. Subsequently, by utilizing data based theorizing research strategy, data was analyzed, and a theory for mobilizing capacities towards collective micro-financing based on the systematic Strauss and Corbin method was developed. The results obtained indicate that capacities possessed by the Basij, including jihadi groups, previous experiences, as well as the high productivity of Basij, renders this institution a suitable candidate for managing crowdfunding platform.