Many moons ago a chap called Tim Lee Davey won a tv show to become a racing driver. He was relatively successful and managed to acquire a Porsche 962C for endurance racing. I recall one year in the 80s he was selling space on the car. You could get your name on it for a reasonable sum (I don't recall how much now). But that's an early example of crowd funding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Lee-Davey