With the enactment of the long-awaited U.S. security-based crowdfunding regulations in May 2016, early-stage private companies can utilize regulatory crowdfunding to raise funds on digital platforms via multiple nonaccredited investors. To protect such small microinvestors and maintain market efficiency, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires extensive disclosure information in filings. However, with many ventures being new, small, or lacking in experience, there has been little practical guidance on best practices for navigating such disclosures-particularly to enhance funding prospects. We aim to address this gap by focusing on two crucial aspects of disclosures: financial reporting and the disclosure narrative. We draw on extant research in the field and outline the best disclosure practices for potential regulatory crowdfunding issuers based on signaling theory and institutional theory. Our recommendations offer a simple but practical guide to SEC financial reporting and disclosures for successful regulatory crowdfunding.

Though crowdfunding is no longer an atypical fundraising mechanism, its practical use remains limited, particularly when it comes to social entrepreneurship, owing to the numerous challenges unique to social-entrepreneurial ventures. By combining existing research on social entrepreneurship, value cocreation, the sharing economy, and digital platforms, this work offers practical insights into how existing platforms can be used for crowdfunding financial resources, sourcing creative ideas, collaborating, and gathering an array of nonfinancial resources. Additionally, this article discusses the ideal digital platform solution and explains how a multifaceted, multiuse digital platform can be created and utilized by new social ventures for meeting a multitude of needs. By focusing on a mission of social change and by understanding how digital platforms can avail crowdfunding, social entrepreneurs can overcome legitimacy issues and lack of traditional funding avenues. This taps into many of the typical aspects of the sharing economy: the benevolence of the actors, use of the internet for facilitation, and the motivation to engage in a new way of doing things. Thus, this article adopts a multidisciplinary view in exploring how crowdfunding can be coupled with the remobilization of idling resources using digital platforms to support social-entrepreneurial ventures in a myriad of ways.