Recently I’ve become obsessed with the idea of crowdfunding. For those of you who are not familiar with the term, crowdfunding is essentially the buzzword people are using to describe raising money for creative projects through bite-sized contributions from the general public. How it usually works is, the project creator offers interested parties rewards for relatively small donations (e.g. if you give me $5 toward my project, I will mail you some stickers, give me $10 and I’ll mail you a hand-drawn sketch). Crowdfunding is not simply taking donations for your project, you have to be clever about giving people something they actually want in return for their money.

So why am I so obsessed? Why not just look for private investors/grants/etc. like normal people do?! I’m really convinced that there is more to this crowdfunding phenomenon, and here are some of my reasons…

Crowdfunding Necessitates Transparency
You can’t convince 50 potential strangers to fork over their cash without telling them who you are, what you want to do and how exactly you plan to do it. Why is it good to have to put everything out in the open? Because it leaves no room for egos to get in the way of good creative projects. You NEED to show your personality, how you do the things you do and why you are actually passionate about making something happen. The transparency of this process encourages the sharing of knowledge, the inspiration of like-minded individuals and good ol’ honesty. It also requires you to be a human being. People can smell it instantly when you are cheaply peddling your goods purely for profit. A crowdfunded producer needs to appeal to investors genuinely, politely and like a human instead of a ‘separate legal corporate entity’.

Crowdfunding Fosters Your Community
I’ve been releasing music, videos, graphic novels, etc. for years now and the hardest part has usually been finding the audience for my work. Everyone is too damned busy and while someday they’ll find something you’ve made and call you up to say “Whoa, that IS really awesome! Why didn’t you show me this before?“, that satisfaction rarely comes when you need it most; after the work is done and you are really excited to show people what you’ve made! With crowdfunding, people are getting in on the ground level. If I buy your EP for $5 after its complete, I am trading money for goods, I listen, its cool, the end. If I give you $5 that you need in order to make that EP, I get to watch my money grow. I want to check in to see how you are putting it to use, I am personally invested in both you and your project, and that final product is more than just some music, I helped make it happen. I mean that too, with my crowdfunded projects, I literally see the people who contribute as collaborators who are supplying me with time, money and good reasons to create. When my project is finished, there’s no harassing people to check it out, they’ve seen what has gone into it, probably improved it with their ideas and feedback and are already legitimately engaged with it.

Crowdfunding Is Hard
I am definitely guilty of thinking crowdfunding could be easy money. It is not. Crowdfunding is not charity. People will not give money to things that don’t interest them. Even if something does interest them, they still want something really cool in return. Crowdfunding is literally just a new way of doing commerce, it is giving money to projects BEFORE there is a product, it puts the consumer in the position of investor. The upside of this? It really does force you to have good ideas and to flesh them out entirely. The means of production are obviously getting more and more accessible, and therefore quality becomes much more important than quantity. Watch Youtube for 5 minutes and tell me we need MORE content in the world….. In order to successfully crowdfund a project, you need to convince not just one investor, but a crowd of them of the merits of what you are doing. That is hard unless you are genuinely passionate, have truly figured out every detail and are good at communicating the idea to others. Putting the power to fund projects in the hands of the crowd democratizes who gets to decide what culture gets the funding it requires.

Crowdfunding Doesn’t Blow Anyones Bank, But It Can BLOW THEIR MINDS!
I would love to be able to say I paid for my favorite author to write my favorite book. Sadly, that isn’t going to happen. However, I can get pretty close. If I was to the one who gave $5 to my favorite author, which went toward that pint he drank while sitting in the pub writing, that one afternoon when such and such happened in his life, and led him to come up with that one paragraph that blew my mind; I would be so damned proud of that. The age of celebrity is over, we are all people, even those genious people, and we all need little things like a pint or a kick in the ass now and again. I think we underestimate the satisfaction in these sorts of things. As a content creator, I’m insane. Obviously. These projects quickly become babies, and all I want is for them to be really good. I work like a maniac because I get caught up in the flow of being inspired. The small details like who bought me the pint that was my reward for working all day, really do matter in keeping that inspiration alive and moving. It may sound flaky but its true.

If I had all the money in the world to make anything I wanted, I’d get so uninspired, so quickly. Waking up in the morning to see that so and so has contributed $2 to my project means that I can go get a coffee and dedicate my mind to the project while I drink it. It also means that someone else is invested in what I’m doing. That is incredibly rewarding and legitimizes the fact that I’m killing myself over making this project the best it can be. Crowdfunding makes me personally responsible to my contributors and moreso than the money, that excitement and support is worth its weight in gold in terms of how much of a motivator it is. On the flipside, as a contributor I get real, concrete satisfaction that I bought a creator a pint so that they can stay sane while making something really damn cool.

Crowdfunding Rewards Ingenuity & Resourcefulness
I am sick of Hollywood remaking movies that were popular only 20 years ago. It is boring. It smells uninspired, these movies are always cogs in the wheel, crap churned out that people don’t expect much from but enjoy because they are already familiar with it. Any ‘creative’ industry that rewards uninspired projects needs a shift in the balance of power. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but in my experience thus far, crowd-funding has only rewarded my ideas that are somehow intriguing, new or a little outside the box. After my friends and family have done their part to try and help support me (by the way, this number definitely does dwindle as you launch more campaigns and ask for their help over and over), after the “I support you because I know you” money has come in, you are left with strangers.

For me personally, the ONLY reason I’d give a stranger my money is if their idea was so cool that it either inspires me, is undeniably useful/relevant to the world or at least made me smirk while I drink my morning coffee. So you need a good idea, probably one that is somehow innovative. You also need to be resourceful in how you expose those strangers to your idea. Anyone with a budget to launch a proper old-media marketing campaign isn’t going to turn to crowdfunding to get the money for their project. That leaves those of us who enjoy chomping at the bit and experimenting with social media, alternative marketing, etc. You need to approach people in ways that doesn’t just make them hear your message, but really encourages them to get involved with it. That sounds like a cheap marketing firm slogan, but I mean involved on a personal level, like through Gmail chat, or conversations back and forth on Twitter. I’m talking about REAL communication between people. Being resourceful in your marketing means not appealing to guilt, greed or lust in your audience but rather to ambition, creativity and the pride inherent in building something from the ground up.

Those are just a few of my initial thoughts on crowdfunding. I am still relatively new to the game… I’ve had one successful project, The Flood of 1924, I’m currently running a campaign to fund a podcast here, and I’m about to launch a third project I’m a part of soon (a free-to-play online MMO game). I’m certainly still learning but thus far I think the process is something we really should all consider and at least give a shot for our creative projects. If we figure it out, I’m pretty sure it could be a humanizing way of getting really cool culture made.