Chris Waddell wants to climb Kilimanjaro in a wheelchair; George Del Barrio wants to make a film in Cambodia; Jeff Edwards wants to write a book about a sci-fi writer: They want you to fund their dreams.
Web site Kickstarter.com is making it possible for people like this to raise sums ranging from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars to fund anything that captures the imagination of Internet users with a little money to spare.
It worked for Emily Richmond, a 24-year-old living in Los Angeles who plans to sail solo around the world for two years.
She raised US$8,142 from 148 people who will receive rewards such as photos from the trip, an origami sailboat or a telephone call when she crosses the equator.
Landon Ray, who runs a marketing software firm called SendPepper.com, gave US$500 after showing his five-year-old daughter Richmond’s video promising to keep donors updated by blog and send rewards such as a coconut mailed from a far-flung port.
“I thought this was a perfect learning experience for my daughter,” Ray said, adding that he also dreamed of sailing the world himself, so it was partly about living vicariously.
Many of the projects are by filmmakers, musicians, artists and writers. Project creators set a time limit and a target. If they don’t reach it, they get nothing.
Jason Bitner’s pitch for US$7,500 to pay for post-production of a documentary about the small Midwestern town of La Porte, Indiana, was so popular it raised US$12,153.
The film is about an archive of portraits by a photographer who died in 1971. Bitner came across boxes of the pictures in the back room of a diner and has published a book. The film features interviews with the subjects 40 or 50 years later.
About a third of his 149 backers were friends and family. Others include residents of La Porte but also people from as far afield as Denmark and Australia.
Jonathan Scott Chinn, who is seeking US$16,500 to make a short comedy-horror film called Always a Bridesmaid said the site was an efficient “creative marketplace.”
“You’re given the opportunity to make your pitch and if it’s really interesting, it will take off,” he said.
Kickstarter cofounder Perry Chen said about US$500,000 had been donated in the four months since it was launched, with more than 60 percent of projects achieving their goal.
Until now the site has charged no fee, but from the middle of this month it will charge 5 percent of funds donated to successful projects.
Chen said so far there had been no scams that he knows of, though plenty of projects simply don’t take off.
“The model works really well to prevent any type of misbehavior because the people who fund these projects; there’s always a core group of the person’s social network,” he said. “Those are bridges people will work very hard not to burn.”
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
In the East Room of the White House on a particularly frigid Saturday afternoon, US President Joe Biden bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 19 of the most famous names in politics, sports, entertainment, civil rights, LGBTQ+ advocacy and science. Former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton aroused a standing ovation from the crowd as she received her medal. Clinton was accompanied to the event by her husband, former US president Bill Clinton, daughter, Chelsea Clinton, and grandchildren. Democratic philanthropist George Soros and actor-director Denzel Washington were also awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor in a White House
Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia was expected to meet Argentine President Javier Milei yesterday on a regional tour to drum up support ahead of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s swearing-in for a third term. Venezuelan authorities have offered a reward of US$100,000 for information leading to the capture of Gonzalez Urrutia, who insists he beat Maduro at the polls in July last year and is recognized by the US as Venezuela’s “president-elect.” The 75-year-old fled to Spain in September after being threatened with arrest by Maduro’s government, but has pledged to return to his country to be sworn in as
RSS