Crowdfunding (CF) in a social entrepreneurship (SE) context is praised in media narrations for its multifaceted potential. From an academic point of view, little has been written about CF as a whole, and enquiries from the SE sphere are mostly concerned with donation-based CF. This paper first reviews extant literature on financing social ventures and CF. Based upon the findings, the author draws up a schema of CF’s inner workings and subsequently discusses it in an SE context. From this model, a research agenda consisting of eight themes is derived: types and utility functions; corporate governance; investor relations, reporting and risk; opportunity recognition; networking; legitimacy; financial metrics and legal and regulatory hurdles.