Fundraising rules need fixing to keep crowdfund dollars rolling

It’s the unbridled good news story of the week: children’s newspaper Crinkling News has been saved from closure by a massive last-minute fundraising effort.

The paper, aimed at seven to 14-year-olds, had run out of seed funding and urgently needed $200,000 to develop the business and stay afloat. So editor Saffron Howden launched a “Save Crinkling News” campaign on crowdfunding site, indiegogo, warning “without your help we will publish our last issue this week”.

Within two weeks, more than $211,000 was raised.

“We are very grateful to get so many people behind us,” says a relieved Howden, who set up Crinkling with her own funds a year ago.

Crowdfunding online has grown rapidly during the past decade. From US based sites like indiegogo, GoFundMe and Kickstarter, to the Australian-originated Pozible, OzCrowd and mycause, there has been a proliferation of options for people to seek help for their causes, dreams and personal problems.

According to mycause founder Tania Burstin, crowdfunding is the “modern way of collecting money”.

“You use an app on your phone to do your online phone banking. [This] is the same thing.”

Burstin, whose site focuses on “personal causes”, adds crowdfunding has “very low overheads and it’s very fast.”

Crowdfunding campaigns range from people asking for funds to make movies, gadgets and craft beer to those wanting to save their local bee colony, pay for cancer treatment or raise money for bereaved families. More conventional charitable pursuits are getting in on the act, too. Chuffed.org is only open to “social causes” like funds for a school in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or nappies for Syrian refugee babies.

Big money is changing hands. While individual donations can be as little as $5, Pozible has raised $56 million since it launched out of Melbourne in 2010.

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Source: Fundraising rules need fixing to keep crowdfund dollars rolling – Sydney Morning Herald