More Than One Way to Tell a Story: A Configurational Approach to Storytelling in Crowdfunding

Entrepreneurship scholars argue that effective storytelling is critical to the fundraising process, yet scholars rarely examine how the inclusion of core story elements in resource appeals such as characters, plot, or setting impacts fundraising effectiveness. Drawing from narrative theory and research on narrative analysis, we examine how the inclusion of fundamental story elements impacts fundraising in 359 crowdfunding campaigns. We leverage a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to provide a holistic exploration of how story elements shape funding and reveal five storytelling configurations that yield superior funding performance. We then unpack the theoretical and practical implications of our findings to provide a deeper understanding of storytelling in resource acquisition.