Crowdfunding websites are a new way to get money from the community / other people for your project, charity or business and they are an exciting new application of crowdsourcing!
Here's a definition of crowdfunding from Wikipedia:
Crowd funding (sometimes called crowd financing or crowd sourced capital)
describes the collective cooperation, attention and trust by people who network and pool their money together, usually via the Internet, in
order to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations. Crowdfunding occurs for any variety of purposes, from disaster relief
to citizen journalism to artists seeking support from fans, to political campaigns.
Last week we met the founders of Fundbreak (Rick Chen and Alan Crabbe) a crowdfunding website for Australian creatives (designers, artists, musicians etc). As DesignCrowd is a 'crowdsourcing platform' (a close cousin of sites like Fundbreak) and our community is full of creatives and entrepreneurs we thought we'd share the concept of crowdfunding (and some example crowd funding sites) with everyone!
Here are 4 good crowdfunding sites you should consider:
#1 - GrowVC (for business ventures)
Crowdfunding site for business! Got a great idea but don't have any venture capital (VC) contacts? Try GrowVC (Grow Venture Community) the self-proclaimed 'Virtual Silicon Valley'.
#2 - Kickstarter (for creative projects)
Post creative projects from food to film to fashion. Kickstarter take a 5% fee of what you raise and its all or nothing (if you don't raise your target you don't get any funds).
#3 - Fundbreak (for Australian creative projects)
Australian crowdfunding website for creative projects and ideas (currently in Beta). Free to list a crowd funding project. Keep it running from 1 to 50 days. Success fee varies from 5% to 7.5%.
#4 - Indiegogo (for creative projects)
Nominated for a webby award but also second to market after Kickstarter. Good thing is you don't need to 'hit your fundraising target' to receive the money people have pledged.
Crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, crowdawesome.
Hope that was useful!
Written by DesignCrowd on Tuesday, June 29, 2010
DesignCrowd is an online marketplace providing logo, website, print and graphic design services by providing access to freelance graphic designers and design studios around the world.
