Crowdfunding is a method of raising money for a project by
obtaining small amounts of money from many people to reach a desired monetary
goal. Crowdfunding was a central topic of conversation when I had friends over
for dinner last Saturday to eat seafood paella (mmmmm, paella). This was due to
the fact that one of my favourite webcomics, Order of the Stick, had just
raised over US$1.2 million through Kickstarter. And Wasteland 2, a post
apocalyptic role playing computer game had just raised over US$2.3 million to
turn it into an actual game (Thanks in part to my friend Fraser who contributed to the second of these projects).
Just a day or two later, thanks to the blog of scifi author
David Brin, I came across Petridish (great name incidentally), a site for
crowdfunding science. Science has long been dependent on rich benefactors,
whether individuals or governments, for funding. This goes all the way back to the Middle Ages where one needed a rich patron, preferably the king. Crowdfunding provides an
intriguing alternative funding mechanism for scientific research projects.
Though clearly scientific researchers can’t yet compete with webcomics or
computer games for glamour, since the projects on Petridish are mostly trying to raise $10,000 rather than millions of dollars.
If crowdfunding does become a significant
mechanism of scientific funding, this would raise concerns in my mind that we
would be prioritizing funding based on gimmicks or pretty pictures rather than
on any actual scientific excellence. Of course, whether the current grants
system in Western countries really rewards scientific excellence is a topic for
future blogging.
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| Not the paella I cooked, as I drank too much wine and forgot to take a photo of my paella |
If you ask whether crowdfunding will become a significant mechanism of science funding in the nearest future, I would rather be sceptical about it, because:
ReplyDelete1) The general public awareness about the significance of scientific research may not be quite there (I want to add "yet" here :). And for crowdfunding to be significant, numbers do matter.
2) This is somehow related to the previous point, for an idea to be successful in gaining significant amount of crowdfunding, it needs to have an aura of certain "coolness" about it, at least for many people (numbers game again). In other words, it must be something after contrubuting to which you can brag about it with your friends and sound really cool!:) And, here, again, we go back to my previous point above.
What is Crowdfunding? How to raise funds by crowdfunding? Which is the best crowdfunding site or platform to trust? The only answer is MyFundNow. Start crowdfunding here for 100% Campaign success with full fundraising!
ReplyDeleteI already visited your wasteland 2 campaign on kickstarter & found it's well qualified for fastest fundraising that's why I would suggest there to start another on myfundnow because it's well known for fastest fundraising. Good luck & thanks for share such a informative post!
In short, crowdfunding makes it possible to raise small amounts of money from a large amount of total strangers. For that reason, it's great. Crowdfunding websites for business
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