Did You Know? (Kickstarter)

That Kickstarter is the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects that needs people like you for projects like ours to succeed? 

Kickstarter was founded in 2008 by Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, and Charles Adler and  is based in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.  As of May 2012, Kickstarter had more than $230 million dollars pledged and more than 23,000 successfully funded projects.  On May 18, 2012, The Pebble: E-Paper Watch for iPhone and Android raised $10,266,845 to become the most funded project in Kickstarter history.

Kickstarter is a crowd funding website that has funded a diverse array of endeavors, ranging from indie films, music and comics to journalism, video games, and food-related projects.  One of a new set of fundraising platforms dubbed “crowd funding,” Kickstarter facilitates gathering monetary resources from the general public, a model which circumvents many traditional avenues of investment. People must apply to Kickstarter in order to have a project posted on the site, and Kickstarter provides guidelines on what types of projects will be accepted. Project owners choose a deadline and a target minimum of funds to raise. If the chosen target amount is not pledged by the deadline, no funds are collected (this is known as a provision point mechanism). 

Money pledged by donors on successful projects is collected using Amazon Payments.  Kickstarter takes 5% of the funds raised as their fee; Amazon charges an additional 3–5% for processing of pledge payments.  These amounts are built into the project goal amount, as are costs of completing the project and fulfilling backer rewards.  Kickstarter claims no ownership over the projects and the work they produce; however, projects launched on the site are permanently archived and accessible to the public.  After funding is completed, projects and uploaded media cannot be edited or removed from the site.

There are presently two active projects on Kickstarter based in Gloucester: 

My Tales of Bong Tree Island book project

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1997277714/martines-owlpuss-interviews-and-tales-of-bong-tree

and Alison Woitunski’s Feel Good Food and Yoga project

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/feelgoodfoodandyoga/feel-good-food-and-yoga?ref=home_location

Two prior Gloucester based Kickstarter projects included Karen Ristuben’s Plastics in Our Ocean to raise awareness of global ocean pollution and Dennis Lanson’s Opus 139 Project  film about the C.B. Fisk Pipe Organ Company and its collaboration with Harvard University.

Please back and be a part of this awesome Tales of Bong Tree Island project, destined to go down in history, and receive a great reward (for a $25 pledge you will receive a signed copy of this 128 page full color illustrated historical fantasy based on Edward Lear’s poem The Owl and the Pussycat and the eternal gratitude of the owlpusses of Bong Tree Island and explorer Martine Bates of Gloucester).  You can pledge as much as you like, or as little as $1.   348 people pledging $25 will fully back the balance of this project goal. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1997277714/martines-owlpuss-interviews-and-tales-of-bong-tree

As a comparison, this is White Flour Book, a children’s book project in Chapel Hill, NC by David LaMotte that successfully funded a couple of months ago with 592 backers pleding a total of $37,805 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/davidlamotte/white-flour-book?ref=category.

Seems to me there should be at least 348 Good Morning Gloucester FOB’s willing to pledge $25 to help Tales of Bong Tree Island project succeed, as well as a group who would like to help Alison succeed with her project, Feel Good Food and Yoga.   I have backed two Kickstarter projects myself, and it is very rewarding and fun to be a part of the success of someone’s creative endeavor.

Many together can accomplish what one alone cannot do.  Because it requires the collaboration and support of many people, I find the Kickstarter model to be a very exciting way to accomplish a project.  Now that you know about it, I hope other creative people with projects on Cape Ann will look into launching Kickstarter projects as well. 

Thanks!  The deadlines for both these projects is July 11.

E.J. Lefavour

www.khanstudiointernational.com

http://whereisbongtreeisland.wordpress.com/

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1997277714/martines-owlpuss-interviews-and-tales-of-bong-tree