Crowdfunding
September 11, 2015 at 10:03 am
College is expensive. For a single mother with four sons, three of whom are in college, the costs can be nightmare-inducing. Why not ask friends, family and the community to help out while everyone has a good time partying? San Diego Unified School Board President Marne Foster has discovered how much trouble a parent and…
September 9, 2015 at 10:48 am
A fundraiser for the six Baltimore police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray features the image of a brick with the phrase "The Battle of Mondawmin." The shirt refers to the beginning of the April 27 unrest in West Baltimore, where officers were injured as rioters threw bricks and rocks. The rioting broke out…
September 2, 2015 at 9:51 am
A Federal District Court in Maryland recently granted a crowdfunding website immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) from any claims arising from a fraudulent fundraiser posted on its website. The CDA states, “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any…
August 31, 2015 at 11:13 am
Earlier this year UK equity crowdfunding pioneer Crowdcube proudly announced that JustPark, a company pitching for investment through its platform, had raised a record breaking £3.7 million. It was one the many success stories that has helped place crowdfunding squarely on the collective radar screen of startups and early-stage companies. In deal terms, crowdfunding in…
August 20, 2015 at 2:07 pm
Crowdfunding platform GoFundMe is no stranger to odd requests, but one southern politician's campaign to solve his state's current financial woes might be a first. As Alabama's government struggles to pass a budget, state Sen. Paul Sanford launched a GoFundMe campaign to "Fund the Alabama State Government," with $300 million.
August 17, 2015 at 2:23 pm
Attention "Lord of the Rings" fans: Minas Tirith might be real—eventually. A self-professed “ambitious team of architects and structural engineers” has launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise the necessary funds to build the fictional city created by J.R.R. Tolkein and visualized by Peter Jackson in his cinematic version of "Lord of the Rings." The architects…
August 11, 2015 at 2:21 pm
Crowdfunding websites, such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo, are transforming the way the arts in America are funded, enabling thousands of unknown artists and performers to finance stage productions, CDs and tours, The Washington Post reports. In 2014, Kickstarter helped raise $251 million—more than the grants budget for the National Endowments for the Arts—for projects pitched…
July 30, 2015 at 12:39 pm
Houston, the Smithsonian has a problem—or at least it did. Its National Air and Space Museum wanted to display Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 spacesuit in July 2019 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, but traditional fundraising methods had not proved adequate to support the project. In response, a museum complex founded in…
July 22, 2015 at 12:34 pm
The world famous Smithsonian Institution has launched its first crowdfunding campaign in the hope that science fans will help preserve an iconic piece of space memorabilia. Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 spacesuit has seen some wear and tear over the decades, however, for the moonwalk's 50th anniversary, the Smithsonian's National Air and Space museum wants to…
July 20, 2015 at 1:13 pm
Crowdfunding is relatively new—Indiegogo (2008), Kickstarter (2009) and GoFundMe (2010), three of the biggest platforms and key players in the crowdfunding boom, were founded in the last seven years. Sometimes, it takes awhile for nonprofits to embrace new technology, and longer still to start using it effectively. Not so with crowdfunding platforms...
