The Crowdsortium is a group of crowdsourcing industry practitioners that have organized themselves with the mission of advancing the crowdsourcing industry through best practices, education, data collection, and public dialog.

The crowdsourcing model is being continuously applied to new issues. Crowdsourcing platforms now exist as a means of performing distributed tasks, co-creating complex solutions, and sourcing the best expert and amateur workers for projects that require specialized skills.

As the issues that the crowdsourcing industry addresses become more complex, the industry itself is forced to adapt. This is where the Crowdsortium can help.

For example:

• What crowdsourcing model should we use?
• How do we handle intellectual property rights?
• How do we logistically manage international participants?
• How do we fairly reward participants for their work?
• What are the benefits of monetary versus non-monetary rewards?
• How can game mechanics influence crowd dynamics?
• Should the crowd be anonymous or individually identified?

Crowdsourcing businesses tend to share the same issues. The Crowdsortium is designed to use the very mechanism that the industry is built upon – crowdsourcing – to solve these issues. Currently there are more than 220 members of the Crowdsortium. By applying the collective wisdom of our experiences, we are able to develop solutions that benefit all of our members. Members contribute new thoughts, ideas, and solutions that benefit every part of the crowdsourcing ecosystem, helping it to continuously evolve and grow.

The Crowdsortium recognizes that the crowdsourcing ecosystem is comprised of five classes of participants: funders, practitioners, customers, the crowd and researchers. The Crowdsortium aims to provide each of these constituents with the knowledge, data and best practices to get the most out of their participation in crowdsourcing.