Info From the Vine: Crowdfunding Works!

Crowdfunding is here to stay. The concept is simple- ask for help from the “crowd” to obtain financing for your project or cause in the form of a donation. With some “boots on the ground” support encouraging your followers to visit your online webpage, money starts to flow in.

Does it work? There are a lot of promises made these days about the wonders of the old “Inter-Web” but does this crowdfunding  “walk” equal the “talk”?

Looking at Kickstarter.com statistics the answer is yes! Through May of 2014, over 62,000 projects have funded. Digging into the numbers you can see that over 11% funded for over $1,000,000.  Math tells us that is a lot of big dollar successes. 

Here are examples of 5 successful crowdfunding  campaigns of 2013:

     1.       Smart Watches- The Kreyos Meteor. Goal: $100,000  Actual: $1,500,000

     2.       Cloud-based 3-D Printer- The Buccaneer. Goal: $100,000  Actual: $1,500,000

     3.       Location Devices- The Chipola. Goal: $25,000, Actual: $293,000.

     4.       Photography- The Pixelstick. Goal: $110,000, Actual: $628,000.

     5.       Software- The McCaw. Goal: $75,000, Actual: $275,000.

It’s always better to under-promise and over-deliver and that is exactly what the crowdfunding phenom is doing.

- Mike Prongue
  Campaign Director for the Non Profit SignVine
  michael@signvine.org
  www.signvine.org