PEOPLE FUNDING DREAMS  

The third most funded project at Kickstarter.com

We The People have populated the earth, built great societies and towering structures, fired rockets into space and landed on the moon. We have discovered, developed, engendered, despoiled, destroyed. We The People are an awesome force and none more so than when we exert our collective might for some grand purpose, preferably for the good.

Which is what makes crowd funding such an exciting and novel way of making individual dreams a reality -- dreams that involve creative pursuits such as art and books and theater performances and documentaries but can extend to a wide gamut of commercial endeavors. It's a far cry from the traditional funding methods most people are familiar with, such as small business loans, venture capital, public or private grants, and "angel" investors. And the model is also being used to finance business projects, social enterprises and charities.

Crowd funding websites, of which there are quite a few, essentially match interesting projects with people who might become interested in funding them. The beauty of it is that anyone can get involved and vicariously become part of the dream.  You don't have to be  Mr. Trump or Carlos Slim to participate. Even a small pledge of $1 is acceptable to help grow the chain of pledges into a significant sum. People power at its best.

The thing about dreams it that they nearly always depend on the help of others.Vincent Van Gogh would probably have fallen into oblivion had it not been for his brother Theo's wife, Johanna Gezina van Gogh-Bonter, whose advocacy of Vincent's work helped secure his reputation as a great artist. Or take cinematography.  Behind every great movie, there is a crowd of talented professionals whose individual skills contributed to the realization of a film classic. The success of one is built on the support of many.

And so with creative pursuits, which make our lives more interesting and meaningful. For any of these projects to get off the ground, money is of the essence.  With crowd funding, the public at large is enlisted into a collective  that evaluates sundry projects and decides which ones to fund: the competition for attention and funding  is tough as the projects are many, some more worthy or fascinating than others. But each one is clearly the product of the imagination and passion of one or more individuals.

Kickstarter.com calls itself the largest funding platform of creative projects in the world.  Founded in 2009, this New York-city based site has raised more than $75 million in pledges for projects spanning music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields.  A little less than half of the projects submitted to the site are successfully funded. The most common pledge is $25. The average raised is $10,000 although some projects have raised considerably more. Such is the case of Chicago artist Joshua Harker's Crania Anatomica Filigree scultpture project which attracted 955 backers and raised more than $77,271 as of  its Oct. 24 deadline, making it the third must funded project ever.

"This is not about investment or lending. Project creators keep 100 percent ownership and control over their work.They offer products and experiences that are unique to each project, " says Kickstarter. " Projects are big and small, serious and whimsical, traditional and experimental. They're inspiring, entertaining, and unbelievably diverse."

To enroll in the platform, project owners submit their idea to Kickstarter which makes sure they are within established guidelines. Project owners decide on a minimum funding target and a deadline for raising money which backers pledge through Amazon Payments.  If the funding goal is not met by the deadline, none of the money raised changes hands. "It protects everyone involved. Creators aren't expected to develop their project without necessary funds, and it allows anyone to test concepts without risk," according to Kickstarter, which collects a 5 percent fee from the project's funding total, if the project is successfully funded. For its part, Amazon charges credit card processing fees ranging from 3 to 5 percent.

By vesting people in the dreams of creators, crowd funding essentially enables everyone to be a dreamer too. More than one million people visit Kickstarter each month. A visit will leave you enthralled and amazed at the wealth of imaginative projects waiting to see the light of day.  In the words of Kickstarter.com, "Passion, ideas and ambition abound. Start exploring!"

Photograph by Denise Blasor
You desire to know the art of living, my friend?
It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.
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 A person who is heading north is not making any mistake, in my opinion." -- E.B.White

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