You’ve probably become aware of Kickstarter, a “crowdsourced funding” site that allows artists to raise funds via the Internet. It’s not a charity site like DonorsChoose.org, or a peer-to-peer micro-lender like Prosper or Lending Club, but a micro-patronage site that lets people fund as much or as little as they can afford.
Have We Got A Site For You!
The model is simple: an artist has a project that she wants to do (say, a pivot pad for an iPad or Kindle) and offers certain incentives depending on the amount you donate. And people donate. It’s a little like the public broadcasting fundraising model, only not tax-deductible.
Crowdfunding has been a major boon to several indie RPG designers. I spoke to some game designers on my podcast All Games Considered (episode here) and they were really enthusiastic about the concept. PurplePawn.com, a gaming news site, also has a very informative article about How To Succeed Or Fail At Kickstarter. I suggest you check out both if you’re interested in understanding how Kickstarter is affecting the tabletop gaming hobby.
There’s also a host of imitator sites, such as IndieGoGo, MicroVentures, and IgnitionDeck. I’ve become a total addict of Kickstarter, because even though I haven’t had the money to donate to too many projects, I love looking at the projects that are up on the site. So much creativity, especially in the Games section! I’ve backed a couple of RPG projects, and I’m eyeing some board game projects.
Kickstarter has a specific sort of project that they’ll approve for the site: no charities, for example, no cause awareness fundraising, no “fund my life” fundraising (raising funds to pay tuition, for example), that sort of thing. I’m certainly not against charitable fundraising, but that’s not what I’m coming to crowdsourced funding site for. The projects that go up on Kickstarter, I feel, have been held to a certain standard, which I like.
But I have to confess, though: some of the projects on the assorted sites make me scratch my head. Kickstarter has one project that, honest to goodness, I don’t see why it was approved, This Batman Life. Basically, what you’re funding is a self-improvement project: one guy goes around the country taking meditation, martial arts, and survival training classes–basically acquiring some of the skills that Batman has. He takes a bunch of photos and blogs about his experience. In return for supporting his project, you get assorted Batman prints, or, at the higher levels, you can accompany him to one of the classes he takes.
Seriously? This got approved? He wrote a hell of a sales pitch, to be sure, but in the end, it’s “please pay for my road-trip vacation”.
This is similar to another project up on IndieGoGo, Pilgrimage America. Once again, a writer who wants people to fund his vacation and idea for a book. No significant incentives, beyond “you can join me at some stage of the trip.”
IndieGoGo is full of this sort of thing, which is why I tend to look askance at the site. I don’t think they do any sort of screening of the projects. For the most part, their projects look pretty good, but occasionally you get things like “help us have a baby“, “send my dog to the beach“, and “give me seed money to use on gambling sites so I can gamble my way to a million dollars“.
Granted, I think many of these projects are geared towards a smaller audience of family and friends (I think that behind the “help us have a baby” project, as well as what’s behind a large portion of the projects in IndieGoGo’s Health section). Which is fine, I suppose, and if some stranger is moved to throw a little money their way, so be it. But after the Kickstarter model, there’s really no excuse for allowing these clearly money-grabby “projects”.
Anyway, if you haven’t checked out Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, and you’re looking for a way to directly support artists and other innovators–and especially if you’re looking to support indie RPG and card/board game designers–give them a look!
