Hi Joshua! I share your concerns on this issue. During one of the latest conferences I attended to, I suggested crowd-funding as an alternative to major funding bodies (e.g. national bodies, ERC) and we all got stuck on this. In the meanwhile, I found this platform:

https://experiment.com/

During that conference, someone asked me precisely your question and I was incited to respond, even though I was only brainstorming. :p Never the less my answer was related to the possibility to be genuine about your scientific interest and how it can help build human and professional capacity with and within the communities. Moreover, you would get an unbiased appreciation of your proposal, for real people would be positioning on how they accept (or not) your proposal, and stand with you by enabling your research. When building proposals for major  funding bodies you need to adopt a more political, and sometimes rhetorical or self-conflicting, discourse, as well as  leave behind some goals and real intentions to ensure conformity with assessment criteria. Basically, I see an unexplored terrain and a number of advantages (but also big responsibilities) with crowd-funded scientific projects. If people are willing to send a dead-body out to space and other ludicrous, or less beneficial, ideas, why wouldn't they contribute to something that would (in)directly improve their life/community/society? :)

Thank you for posting this question. I will be following it.

https://experiment.com/