

Idea: A free crowdfunding site for Creative Commons projects - mikk0j

Summary:
* Crowdfunding for GPL/Creative Commons projects in arts, creative content, software
* Free service, non-profit entity
* Technical help needed<p>Sparked by the copyright discussion on thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3303796 I thought we should properly experiment in crowdfunding of open source and free projects, especially for arts but all creative projects (including software) aimed at creating freely distributable results while the creator still gets paid.<p>Crowdfunding is big, but IPR ambiguity hovers over the model in many cases. Sites like Kickstarter also take a cut (as is their right, of course) from the donations and pledges.<p>I want to create a crowdfunding site that is 100% free for project creators and pledgers. By listing a project on the site, you will also agree that everything produced in that project will be released under GPL or suitable Creative Commons license level. Let's discuss a model and license that makes sense.<p>I need help in creating this service. I am happy to cover hosting, any design needs &#38; legal help as required, though in the spirit of the project maybe we can enlist help for those areas as well. I have a long experience in product management and product marketing from corporations and startups alike.<p>The service itself should be non-profit, and only accept donations (and maybe sponsors - discuss?) to cover costs.<p>Also discuss if you think the idea is stupid / redundant / against your political views.
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caw
What about a co-op of sorts? You could take your cut while people are
donating, and then you give back the extra money in the form of a voucher or
something that can be applied to another crowdsourced project (that way you
don't have to exchange it back to their account and get hit with the
transaction fee going back in).

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mikk0j
Nice one - could work. I'm afraid that could add needless complexity though.
Person pledging now is pledging for a particular project, which is meaningful
to them. Making them think of another future project via a voucher or credit
can confuse them. If there's one thing I've learned, it's never get in the way
of what is meaningful to your users at any given moment.

Could be a future use case, though.

~~~
caw
You don't have to distract from the current project at hand though. You would
do this maybe once a year. A credit would simply appear in their account, and
you send them an email saying something like "Thank you for supporting open
source! We have taken in more money than our operating expenses require, so
we're giving back to the community that gives to community software. You have
$X.XX in your account to donate to any currently open project. This amount was
based on how much you donated over the past N months"

That would keep them coming back, and I don't think it would confuse them. I
mean, people don't get confused when they get their checks from the utility
company or REI. If anything I think your demographic (people who donate to
fund open source software) would understand.

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Mz
As someone who has largely failed to make money while trying to give away what
I have to offer, I have to wonder where you think the money will come from?
What will be the motive to donate? I've known other webmasters, in some cases
of fairly large sites, who just couldn't get the funding they really needed.
They were idealistic and didn't want to "commercialize" it and didn't want to
"beg" for donations either. I guess they thought people should just give out
of the goodness of their hearts and, yet, in one case even when members were
trying to find ways to give, the owner was turning them down due to his
idealism, which was such it simply put a strangle-hold on any means to fund
the site.

Do you have experience with the not for profit model? Are you familiar with
the challenges that most non-profits face in trying to fund their work? Non-
profits work on a similar basis to business as far as asking for money in
exchange for something of value. In other words, the pitch is usually "we
offer a valuable service to the community and you should fund us because it
does positively impact your life in X way (such as reducing the number of
homeless people on the street)"

I'm all for idealistic projects but many of them are so idealistic that they
simply don't work. And frankly I kind of resent how much other people have
benefited from my work while I got little in return. I have serious financial
problems and could use the money. I wish I could find a way to crowd fund what
I do. If I do, most likely that won't be called "crowd funding". It will be
called "sales to the public", perhaps in the form of t-shirts, merchandising,
etc.

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mikk0j
Thanks for the comment!

 _I have to wonder where you think the money will come from? What will be the
motive to donate?_

If this is a question about the crowfunding site itself, this is a non-issue.
Any running costs will be covered. Donations are not required. If the service
becomes meaningful to a lot of people, there will be motivated people to
support it in different ways.

 _Do you have experience with the not for profit model?_

Some, yes. I don't mean to brush aside your valid concerns for the long-term
financial health of the project, but the initial costs will not be
unsurmountable.

 _I have serious financial problems and could use the money. I wish I could
find a way to crowd fund what I do. If I do, most likely that won't be called
"crowd funding". It will be called "sales to the public", perhaps in the form
of t-shirts, merchandising, etc._

So this is part of the reason why I want to do this. A lot of people creating
content have to just throw the content out there and hope it sticks and is
monetizable. The crowdfunding model however is a good "sales to the public"
model, I think, especially when used as a pre-demand and pre-order model. The
biggest projects on Kickstarter for example have been pre-demand projects,
where someone has created a wriststrap for the iPod Nano or a tripod mount for
a camera phone and sold pre-orders for these.

We know that digital content is distributed freely, and this will not go away.
For a writer, for example, this can be a serious problem. Say you create a
non-fiction how-to book on something very specific and niche. A couple of
people buy the ebook, and finding value in it, want to share it with the
people they know in the same niche. They (at least many think this way) get
more social value out of just sharing a digital copy of your work, instead of
pointing their friends to buy it. If you flip this model, and ask for money
upfront for the upcoming content, the same person who has donated will now be
more inclined to find others to donate too, so that the content will actually
get created (this is why Kickstarter's pledge minimums work to motivate
sharing). Of course, in addition to getting the content among the first, they
can get other perks. By all means you can consider this pre-sales or pre-
demand instead of crowdfunding.

But that's going into the CF model in general. If people benefit from a new
platform like this and it creates more copyright-free content while supporting
the creators of such content, as far as I'm concerned it's successful.

