When I was in college and we wanted to raise money, we washed cars, baked cookies or picked and sold strawberries.
Today’s empowered students have more options thanks to online services like, Kickstarter.
Creative endeavors in search of funding describe their project on Kickstarter. Then they have a set amount of time to raise pledges from friends and strangers. . Kickstarter keeps 5% of the funds collected in exchange for hosting the fundraiser. The coolest part is that funding is all or nothing. The pledges only have to be paid if the project reaches its goal. This ensures only the worthiest projects will be funded.
According to Quantcast, Kickstarter gets about 24,000 U.S. hits a day, 36,000 globally.There is a strong Millennial skew: forty-one percent of the traffic is people 18-34.
One example of a Kickstarter project is Massive.tv, a ‘creative storytelling’ project proposed by sixty students at Northwestern University. Here’s the description from the Kickstarter site:
“Our plan is to profile one student a week, someone who we feel is creative and innovative, someone whose skills are unique, whose talents and sense of individualism break through the mundane, and come out the other side. We’ll do a brief, high-quality video profile, a written profile, an interview, and a photo shoot. Our site will also contain an arts and culture blog to tell the community about interesting events, while simultaneously serving as a promotional vehicle for our profile subjects. The third component of our site will bring to the fore existing video content at our school. Check out our prototype site to see how it all works:www.massive.tv
All we need is the equipment to bring a new storytelling aesthetic out of the box and into the world. With Kickstarter, we hope to raise enough money to purchase a single Canon 5D Mark II Digital Camera, and the necessary audio equipment and lens kits. This revolutionary machine looks and acts like a photography camera, but shoots higher-quality HD video than anything in its price range. By a long shot. All we need is a single camera to bring an incredible new resource to the digital media community.
Congratulations to Ben Millstein, Massive.tv’s founder and editor in chief and to his team of undergraduates for their creative funding of their creative project! With just 4 days left, the Massive.tv project has garnered 46 backers who have collectively pledged $3,883. The goal was $3,300 so the project will be funded on September 20. That sure beats a bake sale!
Kickstarter is just one of many online fundraising services non-profits and charitable causes are using to attract new donors.
Mashable profiled ten popular online services,( “Ten Ways to Start a Fund for Social Good Online“). Each has a slightly different emphasis, like volunteer team raising, arts or raising funds for charity. Here are some to check out if you are looking for a cause to support or are one:
FirstGiving, which allows donations to any cause in the Guidestar database.
Razoo.com, individuals fundraising on behalf of their favorite charities
TeamRaiser fundraising for events
Stayclassy, fundraising for events
