Crowdfunding has emerged as a market-based solution to give frontline complex public service employees the opportunity to acquire resources by advertising project proposals for donor patrons on crowdfunding platforms. However, whether crowdfunded resources can improve offline service outcomes, and if so, how and when, remains murky. Focusing on the context of public education crowdfunding and applying theories from crowdfunding and services marketing literature, the authors conceptualize that the combination of two factors—namely, teachers' request for resources meant to satisfy unmet heterogeneous (i.e., diverse and evolving) intellectual needs of students and donors' screening and approval (i.e., crowd screening) of promising projects—helps improve student academic achievement. Collating novel panel data from DonorsChoose and California Department of Education, the authors show that (1) crowdfunded resources positively affect student academic achievement, (2) student academic achievement improves with the increase in the heterogeneity of intellectual needs that crowdfunded resources likely satisfy, (3) crowd screening of project proposals plays a critical role in the offline effectiveness of crowdfunded resources, and (4) crowd screening effectiveness depends on the type of project.

众筹已成为一种基于市场的解决方案，通过在众筹平台上为捐助者宣传项目提案，为一线复杂的公共服务员工提供获取资源的机会。然而，众筹资源是否可以改善线下服务的结果，如果可以，如何以及何时，仍然不明朗。作者着眼于公共教育众筹的背景，并应用众筹和服务营销文献中的理论，将两个因素的结合——即教师对资源的要求旨在满足未满足的异质（即多样化和不断发展的）智力需求。学生和捐助者对有前途项目的筛选和批准（即人群筛选）有助于提高学生的学业成绩。