Kickstarter

If you haven’t yet heard about then you probably aren’t paying attention, since it’s been featured all over the place including The York Times and NPR. Kickstarter is a funding platform for all types of creative projects in the areas of music, film, art, technology, design, food and publishing. It’s a new form of the very old tradition of patronage of the arts…updated for the digital age…and I think it’s amazing.

The way it works is:

if you are creative type with a project that you’ve been dreaming about, but don’t have the funding to implement, you can share it on kickstarter and folks pledge money to help you fund your project. Usually there are rewards involved for the folks doing the pledging–the 1st prints from your new printing press, a pre-release listen of your completed record, etc…There are guidelines, of course, and you can read about them here.

if you want to have an impact, make a statement, get involved and get fun rewards, then you can help others fund their creative projects. Discover projects here.

Do both! Start your own project AND help to fund others!

One great thing about Kickstarter is their all-or-nothing funding rule. Basically, if a project does not reach its funding goal before the deadline, than no money changes hands. This is great, because it’s a great way to see if your project has legs…are folks actually interested enough in your idea to fund it? There’s less risk for everyone involved too. No money changes hands until the project is 100% funded. That means, you aren’t going to funding a project, expecting rewards and then nothing happens because not enough money was pledged. On the other side of things, as a project creator you aren’t going to be expected to complete your project with only half of the funds you need.

There are so many worthy projects on Kickstarter, I wish I could support them all, but here are a few that caught my eye. Some have been funded already and some still need funding.