Organizations and individuals need to engage their communities to gain the social license to operate (SLO). In crowdfunding, SLO is reflected in funding by the members of communities of interest around crowdfunding campaigns. Thus campaign creators’ success relies on obtaining SLO from their communities. This article examines how crowdfunding campaign creators engage their communities to gain and maintain SLO to secure funding for their campaigns. Content analysis of 68 successful and unsuccessful Kickstarter campaigns shows how successful campaign creators build their communities by the use of weak ties and have abundant relational and episodic engagement with their communities to obtain SLO. The results also show how successful campaign creators practice dialogic engagement to maintain their SLO over time. This study expands public relations to crowdfunding by framing crowdfunding as a community engagement practice and operationalizing SLO as tangible funding.

组织和个人需要与社区互动，以获得经营的社会许可证（SLO）。在众筹中，SLO反映在众筹活动周围感兴趣的社区成员的资助中。因此，活动创建者的成功取决于从其社区获得SLO。本文研究了众筹活动的创建者如何使他们的社区参与进来，以获取并维持SLO，以确保其活动获得资金。对68个成功和失败的Kickstarter广告系列的内容分析表明，成功的广告系列创建者如何利用弱势联系建立社区，并与社区进行广泛的关系和情节互动以获得SLO。结果还显示了成功的广告系列创建者如何通过对话来保持他们的SLO。