Crowdfunding Startups Let You Be Your City's Urban Planner. There’s a reason the crowds are said to have wisdom, and why two heads are better than one. Working together, individuals and groups can have a positive synergy that gets things done, so it’s no wonder that cities are benefitting for crowdsourcing instead of just top-down change. Just look at the success of Kickstarter in the crowdfunding space and SeeClickFix in the urban improvement space. These two concepts — crowdfunding and urban improvement — have been married by several recently launched startups, both in the U.S. and abroad.
These civic crowdfunding startups tap local communities and businesses to raise money for community centers and urban beautification, giving citizens a sense of ownership and a stake in the future of their cities. Spoke with three fledgling crowdfundng startups that are showing early success and a lot of promise; read more about them below. Patronhood “We see no boundaries to what can be accomplished with Patronhood,” says Lagaac. Spacehive Citizinvestor. Reviews, News & Press - Aurora. “The secret to a successful campaign: leveraging social-media contacts. It took just two months to raise $144,000 from more than 1,583 donors.”
“The 'crowdfunding site for the rest of us' is, frankly, inspiring. GoFundMe has it all. Kickstarter looks frivolous by comparison.” “Crowdfunding was the obvious choice for Sanders. “I wouldn’t have been able to do that without GoFundMe,” he says. “But crowdfunding isn't just for hipsters anymore; it's moving into all kinds of other spheres, from startups to research to personal causes. “GoFundMe fundraisers get their cash as it comes in - no need to wait to reach a predetermined goal like Kickstarter. “Within three days, he had raised more than $26,000. “GoFundMe.com allows people to create fundraising sites for their personal needs. “GoFundMe Simplifies Group Fundraising: It connects directly to a user's PayPal account and donation pages may also be embedded on a user's existing blog.” Soul Singer's Blues Receive New Life on Kickstarter - Aurora. Lester Chambers of the 1960s soul group The Chambers Brothers has been waiting a very long time for his time to come.
The 72-year-old blues singer has shared the stage with legends like B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix and Johnny Cash — just to name a few. The artist shared a photo in March that revealed his troubling experience with the music industry. "The music giants I recorded with only paid me for seven of my albums. I have never seen a penny in royalties from my other 10 albums I recorded," writes Chambers, holding up a gold record.
"I am now 72, trying to live on $1,200 a month. " Internet users flocked to Chambers' story, and their support might give the artist his long-awaited due. With just 19 days to go, Chambers is $6,000 shy of the project's $39,000 goal. "All the times I sat hoping and wishing I could make another record had finally come true," writes Chambers on Kickstarter. "We have the opportunity to do right by artists and cut out those who'd mistreat them. Crowdtilt Opens API So Anyone Can Create a Crowdfunded Project - Aurora. Crowdtilt, a self-styled "Kickstarter for groups of friends," has released its API to let anyone create their own crowdfunding site.
In an example cited by the company, a vacation home rental site could for example let five friends pay their share for a vacation home rental and then only charge the credit cards if all five have paid. The API is also accessible for crowdfunding models under the JOBS Act. Crowdtilt describes the offering as an "off-the-shelf solution to handle group payments" and a way to provide "groupfunding" rather than crowdfunding. Developers can pick from Balanced, Strip and Braintree, among other payment processors. "Think of it like an engine that can power an entire app. " says James Beshara, CEO and co-founder of Crowdtilt. Crowdtilt, a Y Combinator startup, launched in February. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Urbancow.
10 Kickass Kickstarter Projects From 2012 - Aurora. Crowdfunding has become a popular way to introduce products to people directly and raise awareness on important issues. Consumers no longer have to wait for a brand to innovate a product. Instead, they're finding simple solutions themselves and bringing it straight to consumers. Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter have revived artists, democratized space exploration and helped make the world a better, greener place. These 10 Kickstarter projects may not all have been huge monetary successes, but each made a distinct impact.
What Kickstarter project was your favorite from 2012? Image courtesy of Shervin Lainez. Crowdfunding - Aurora.
GoFundMe: The OFFICIAL Home of Crowdfunding >> - Aurora. Charity Donations & Charity Fundraising Websites - Aurora. Turn Your iPhone 5 into a Notification Alert Light With Sparx. How often do you wish you could see notifications on your phone but not hear them? At the movies, or in a quiet office or waiting room, the existing iOS "LED Flash for Alerts" feature is extremely useful. But how can you use this feature if the flash is covered? SEE ALSO: 14 iPhone 5 Cases You’ll Love Sparx is a protective case that lights up when you receive a notification night or day. This isn't the first time the developers have looked to Kickstarter to fund an alert light project. Indiegogo Expands International Crowdfunding Features.
Indiegogo, the crowdfunding platform used to raise millions of dollars for thousands of campaigns around the world, announced several international expansions on Wednesday. The expansions, which include new currencies, languages and localized homepages, aim to provide more customized and efficient experiences for international users. As of this week, campaigners and contributors using Indiegogo can raise and donate money in euros, pounds sterling and Canadian dollars.
Between 2008, when the U.S. -based platform launched, and now, the U.S. dollar was the only accepted form of currency for campaigns, and users conducting transactions in other currencies were responsible for conversion. This would often cost them more in exchange rates, but the new currency system relieves European and Canadian users of that extra cost. SEE ALSO: How Crowdfunding Is Rewriting the Campaign Finance Playbook "What crowdfunding really is, is people-powered finance," Ringelmann said. Kickstarter Now Live in the UK. Crowdfunding service Kickstarter now lists projects from the UK. Kickstarter first announced the expansion earlier this month. Until now, users from the UK had to set up a U.S. account to launch a campaign on Kickstarter. There is no UK-specific site; instead, all UK projects are now listed alongside U.S. -based projects. For regular users of the site, things won't change much. Furthermore, UK project backers will have to enter their payment information directly on Kickstarter instead of Amazon Payments.
"The request to expand internationally has long been one of our most requested features," Kickstarter's head of community and co-founder Yancey Strickler told the BBC. Breaking Good? Scientists Wants to Crowdfund a Research Meth Lab. An evolutionary pharmacologist and Princeton University research fellow Ethan O. Perlstein is asking for online support to fund a scientific 'meth lab' in order to take a deep dive into how amphetamines affect the human brain. No, it's not a strange plot twist of AMC's hit show Breaking Bad. Perlstein, who earned his doctorate degree from Harvard University, and his collaborator David Sulzer, a professor at Columbia Medical School, started a RocketHub crowdfunding page on October 4 to back a project that could solve a "long-standing puzzle in mental health research.
" The goal of the project is to find how amphetamines — including methamphetamines abused by more than 35 million people worldwide — affect the brain on a cellular level. The researchers believe solving this mystery will lead to more effective personalized treatments for brain diseases and addiction. The team has raised nearly $10,000 of their $25,000 campaign goal with 24 days left on Rockethub. Book About Kickstarter Fails to Raise Enough Money on Kickstarter.
Look up the definition of irony in next year's edition of the dictionary, and you're bound to read about Crowdfunding: A Guide to What Works and Why. According to author Glenn Fleishman, it's a book that "distills hard-won lessons of successful projects into well-documented advice alongside case studies. " The problem? Fleishman turned to Kickstarter to raise $35,000 for his goal, and this weekend, he failed to reach his goal. That's right: as Nik Cubrilovic pointed out on Twitter, a Kickstarter project for a book about running successful Kickstarter projects failed to raise enough money on Kickstarter. SEE ALSO: About 41% of Kickstarter Projects Fail [INFOGRAPHIC] We mean no disrespect to Fleishman, who writes for BoingBoing, MacWorld and other publications — but the irony was too good to pass up. Update: Fleishman's responded to Mashable via e-mail. "I've been crazily busy in a nice earning money way through summer and into fall, so haven't been able to sit down and retool," he wrote.
How to Raise Money with GoFundMe - YouTube - Aurora. RocketHub [Video Interview] - Crowdfunding, advice for crowdfunders - YouTube - Aurora. The Oatmeal Helms Indiegogo's Fastest Growing Campaign, Raises $1.4M [INFOGRAPHIC] The Oatmeal's online crusade to save the Tesla Tower ended with $1.4 million in the bank, as well as the title of Indiegogo's fastest growing campaign. Spearheaded by founder Matthew Inman, the comic site raised a grand total of $1,370,511 over six weeks for "Operation Let's Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum" Monday. His goal was to convert Wardenclyffe, Nikola Tesla’s laboratory located in Shoreham, NY, into a museum and science center honoring the Serbian-American inventor.
To achieve this, Inman started a campaign to help the Tesla Science Center, a local nonprofit group, purchase the $1.6 million property. Inman's original target, which he surpassed in less than a week, was $850,000. SEE ALSO: Comic Site The Oatmeal Launches Serious Fundraiser to Save Tesla Tower Other stats, as seen in the Indiegogo infographic below, are equally staggering. Wikipedia Founder: Online Connections Foster Real Change. Jimmy Wales, founder of the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia.org, spoke about digital campaigning for global health at the 2012 Social Good Summit on Monday. Gabriel Jaramillo, general manager of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, joined him on the panel moderated by Mashable's Pete Cashmore. Wales stressed the benefits of a large-scale idea, as well as the importance of one-on-one connections during a cause's awareness campaign in order to reach its goals.
A cause that has this potential is Global Fund's new digital campaign, "The Big Push," which it hopes will galvanize support and spread awareness among those wanting to eliminate deaths caused by these three diseases. Using the hashtag #TheBigPush, people around the world can share photos of themselves holding facts about these diseases. SEE ALSO: Celebrities Get ‘Malarious’ With CollegeHumor to Save Lives The Global Fund's metric of success will be zero deaths from malaria by 2015. About Ericsson. YouTube Updates Platform for Social Good.
YouTube announced two updates to its non-profit program on Friday, streamlining how non-profits and viral philanthropists can use the social video-sharing platform to turn views into action. Starting July 31, members of the YouTube for Good team will host "YouTube 101" trainings via Google+ Hangout. These live trainings, which will take place on the last Tuesday of every month, are for non-profits that recently joined the non-profit program or created a YouTube page.
The live feed will be available on the YouTube for Nonprofits channel for those who want to watch and listen without being recorded. YouTube also officially announced the integration of annotations that can link to four websites: Change.org, DonorsChoose.org, RocketHub.com and Causes.com. Since April, creators have been able to link to crowdfunding platforms Kickstarter and Indiegogo as well. In the past, annotations could only link to other YouTube videos, channels and search results. How Crowdfunding Is Rewriting the Campaign Finance Playbook. Politics Transformed: The High Tech Battle for Your Vote is an in-depth look at how digital media is affecting elections. Mashable explores the trends changing politics in 2012 and beyond in these special reports. When South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson (R) spontaneously yelled "You Lie! " during President Obama's health care speech in 2009, he didn't just make headlines — he also made a ton of money.
In just two weeks after the outburst, the Wilson campaign raised $2.5 million through the fundraising website Piryx, which has since morphed into an even bigger platform called Rally. Crowdfunding technology isn't new — people have donated to causes for years. But perhaps this type of platform could go one step further and change something that's fundamentally broken in America: campaign finance. Donors = Voters The candidate with the most money has a good chance of winning an election, and that's especially true on a local level. But the biggest issue for local elections is low voter turnout. Gambitious is Crowdfunding for Gamers Only. A new crowdfunding platform that focuses solely on video games launched Tuesday morning, and offers gamers a chance to invest in titles vetted by a team of industry experts.
Gambitious functions like a donation-based platform, such as Kickstarter. It allows people living in the European Union and eventually the U.S. to invest equity into games, and receive returns on their investment. Unlike Kickstarter or IndieGoGo, however, Gambitious doesn't let just anyone submit a project for funding. The company's staff must first meet with the game's creators to make sure they have a working business plan and solid roadmap for their project before going forward.
Gambitious founders Mike Wilson and Harry Miller say they are worried about the future of crowdfunding for games, and want to make sure potential backers don't get burned out. "We're starting to see press about the backlash about people getting sick of being hit up for donations. "Every little thing costs money. Easy Fundraising Ideas that WORK! - Aurora. Online Donations, Fundraising Ideas & Success Stories by GoFundMe - Aurora. Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding Explained - YouTube - Aurora.
5 Crowdsourcing Platforms Every Developer Should Know. Gamers Raise $9,000 for Friend's Brain Surgery. In Need of a New Heart, Ex-NFL Star Turns to Online Crowdfunding. Citizinvestor Helps Grab The Ears of Local Governments. Man Behind Bus Monitor Campaign to Crowdfund for 'Acts of Love' iCrowd - Investment Crowdfunding - YouTube - Aurora.